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The first few days after the battle, Ekko doesn’t rest. He barely sleeps or eats, or allows himself time to think.
He can’t.
There’s too much to do. The dead are in their dozens. His Firelights took a major hit, and he knows that for the next few months his fingers will be numb from painting their pictures on the mural day in and out. So many who could have lived but didn’t. So many could have had better futures. But if he just runs, if he keeps pushing on, he can outrun these regrets and his grief, too. This way, he doesn’t remember Vi’s heartbroken expression when she pulled him into a bone-crushing hug after the fight, blood and sweat still clinging to her, her words choked when she told him—
Four seconds.
He could have saved her. He would have hauled her snarky ass out of that tunnel, ripped that bomb from her hands. He would have—
He runs from those thoughts, too. They suffocate him, and Ekko has too much to fix to be suffocated by his grief right now.
He sure as hell didn’t fight for Piltover. He fought for Zaun, for Firelights. Because he knew Ambessa Medarda would never settle for anything other than complete subjugation. She would have destroyed Ekko’s home. She was already busy murdering and imprisoning their people, and nothing but complete eradication would have followed in her wake.
Ekko did it for… her. The blue-haired symbol of defiance, of uprising. A loud declaration that they won’t live under Piltover’s oppression forever, that they’ll reach greater things one day and won’t be silenced. They won’t wait for permission to breathe again. It’s what she would have wanted, he convinces himself, even though part of him knows Jinx would have enjoyed the chaos of the fight more. Or maybe not. Not since that little girl. Not since he had to save her from herself over and over again, only to lose her anyway.
Undercity mourns her. Her visage is everywhere. Jinx the Saviour. She would have hated it, he thinks wryly. She never got to see just how loved she was.
Maybe he should have grabbed her and ran away. Maybe he should have let the world go to hell and saved her instead. The thought, born of fatigue, lingers only for a few fleeting seconds, a rare moment of selfishness amidst a day spent fixing the world around him.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. If only he had tried harder when they were kids and saved her from Silco. If only he didn’t give up on her.
She’s always been his biggest maybe. And now they’ll never be more. Not this version of them. Never him and her as they were.
Aw, are you gonna mope now, boy saviour?
“You’re not here.”
It punches clean through his chest. The realisation of it. The sheer, horrible weight. He’ll never see her again.
Constants and variables, Benzo told him once. Constants and variables, young Ekko.
A week after the battle versus Noxus, Ekko sinks to his knees inside his room, exhausted and heartbroken, and sobs.
.
Things begin to settle. Slowly, at first, the city might have been gutted after the battle but not destroyed, the morale low but hopeful. Hexgates are gone, and Ekko is glad when he finds out. He doesn’t want to see or hear anything about the arcane for a while. No magic in the world could fix the pain festering in his chest.
Sevika, Silco’s old second-in-command and once his sworn enemy, comes to him two weeks after the attack.
“They’re making me a council member,” she says, grunting when she falls into the tiny wooden chair inside his room.
She’s always been a threatening figure, power rippling from every shift of her body, but Ekko isn’t sure he wants to fight anyone right now. Nor does she seem interested in strangling him. She lights a cigarette, her scarred features set in a fearsome scowl.
“And?” he asks for anything better to say. “How is that any of my business?”
Sevika exhales through her nose, reminding him of an angry bull, all smoke and steely resolve. “I’m the only one presenting Zaun or her interests.”
Ekko almost rolls his eyes. Of course she is. The Council is simply falling over themselves to fix the situation. After months of harassment and oppression, false arrestments and beatings, they asked them to bleed for Piltover and its interests with nothing but the bare minimum courtesy extended towards them afterwards.
“I could use you, kid,” Sevika continues, and Ekko forces his anger away, loosening his fists. “Exactly for that reaction. You’re smart as hell, and been a pain in my ass for years. Pilties will try to walk all over us again in a few months’ time. You and I both know it. We gotta beat them in their own game. Not let them silence us again. I could use someone like you. Be my adviser. You’ll have a direct line to the Council. We’ll make an actual change. It’s better than whatever this is.”
Ekko’s expression sours at her words while Sevika’s gaze flicks around his room in contemplation. He works all day to a point of exhaustion, then passes out. It’s the only way he’s been able to continue, day in and day out. Being in a leadership position means you can’t take time off to grieve. Too many people are relying on him. It’s bad enough that he accidentally abandoned his people for months without meaning to. The guilt he still feels over everything has been nearly suffocating.
It’s a good gig, hero! You should do it and be a thorn in her side.
Ekko blinks the flash of blue from his vision, rubbing his brow just as Sevika adds: “It’s what she would have wanted, you know.”
A jolt of electricity runs through him. Everyone, even Vi, has been avoiding mentioning Jinx in front of him.
His jaw clenches. “You don’t know that.”
“Kid, I know what not letting go looks like,” she says, and it almost sounds compassionate, or as close to it as someone like her can get. “We had our differences in the past, I know as much—”
“You killed my people,” Ekko snaps. “Do you know how many lives you destroyed with Shimmer?”
“Sure do,” she replies listlessly, smoke billowing past her lips. “I won’t try to justify my actions to you. But y’know, when you were gone, Jinx united Zaun in a way I haven’t seen since Vander. Beats me how she did it, but people believed in her. Even your Firelights.”
It mirrors everything he’s seen and heard for weeks. Jinx freeing their people, Jinx the Saviour, the beacon for their new future. The one who set and lived by extreme examples, who made Piltover back off and take the Undercity seriously. Because they all finally realised that there can never be peace without a fight. She should be here to fight this battle with him. Ekko should be busy arguing with her that blowing up another building will not make things right. He shouldn’t be walking around with her ghost a step behind him, tormenting him with ideas of what could and should have been.
“And now she’s dead!”
His ears ring, his chest heaves, and he clutches his thudding heart, willing it back in its cage. He didn’t mean to come undone so easily.
“Yeah. Yeah, she is,” Sevika says, and there’s a grimness to her when she says it, an unexpected pain buried somewhere deep in her gruff voice that makes Ekko see her differently. “I get it.”
“No,” he whispers, pained. “You don’t.”
.
Seven months pass before Ekko finally picks up a brush for her.
He sleeps better at night but not without nightmares. Not without remembering Powder from the alternative universe and how they danced. How sweet her kiss felt. Not without that memory smearing to finding Jinx with a grenade in her hand, again, ready to disappear, go somewhere he could never reach her.
Ekko still hears the detonation in his ears, over and over, on a sickening loop. His mind likes to torture him with ideas he failed to save her. That no matter what he does, or how he mends time, she’s forever out of reach. His blue beacon, his lighthouse he can never find in the depthless ocean of reality.
Many have drawn her, but he still thinks that no one knows the exact hue of her hair or the wicked shine in her eyes better than him. He’s spent an entire lifetime examining them, looking for them in a sea of thousands.
Their city is rebuilding. He agreed to Sevika’s request after a few days of contemplation. Caitlyn Kiramman’s expression when he ambled into the Council room was worth the additional burden now on his shoulder. But she’s changed too, matured, and now fills her position as the Council’s leader well.
Ekko won’t forget how she allowed his friends to be imprisoned, tortured, and, in some cases, killed, but her regret made her side with him and Sevika more often than not during voting, and maybe he could at least one day forgive her. Another maybe. For Vi, if nothing else, who clearly loves the blue-haired woman fiercely.
The barren wall stares at him. He’s painted Powder before, but this is different. One day, his friend, his dearest friend, was simply gone. Without a goodbye, in a wake of tragedy. The life Ekko once had disintegrated beneath his feet overnight. Benzo killed. Vander dead. Mylo and Claggor too. Vi died as well. Or so he believed for years. Powder was missing until a different knife was delivered to him weeks later, when the word on the street spread about Silco being seen with a little girl with blue hair.
Ekko sighs, hanging his head. The city is healing, but he isn’t, or at least not as quickly.
He runs his hand over the white wall, picturing Jinx as he saw her last, those precious hours between talking her down from the abyss and their joint attack on Noxian forces. It felt so good to rely on her again, to stand with her, side by side. As natural as breathing.
You’re the order to my chaos, hero.
“Leave me alone,” he says quietly, head hung low. “It’s been months.”
A figment of Jinx chortles, arms crossed over her chest as she leans back against the wall. You would get bored to death without me. Ha! Get it?
Shooting a glare at her, Ekko picks up a brush, his fingers quivering. Tears burn in his eyes when he dips the brush into the paints he painstakingly mixed. He works, and works, until his eyes are dry and his wrist hurts. Ekko doesn’t stop until he loses light and when he steps back, he is looking at Jinx. Equal parts chaos and something ethereal.
He wipes angrily across his mouth when he tastes saltiness pooling there and goes home.
There’s no sleep that night.
.
Time is a strange thing. It weaves and flows. Without his Z-Drive, he has no control over it. Time simply goes on, and he’s the passenger in a vehicle he doesn’t want to move.
He’s important these days. He’s one of the few bright minds still left, and he’s endlessly busy with something. City of Progress needs every mind that can be spared. Wounds heal, and time dulls the memory, but not everything is so easily forgotten. Piltover moves quicker, but the Undercity erects a statue for Jinx beside Vander’s. He sees Vi at the ceremony, and they exchange strained smiles. They speak sometimes, but it’s not as often as it used to be. They’re both dealing with their grief the best they can.
At least Vi has Cait. Ekko has nothing but a cold bed and purpose.
He and Sevika make a good team. It almost makes him wonder what could have been in a universe where they were on the same side from the start. His Zaun, cracked but not broken, is resembling the bright version of the Zaun and Piltover he saw in the alternative verse. There're years of work still left, but there’s something like hope in him, fragile and misplaced as it might be.
A year passes. Then two. He visits the graves; he lights candles for those lost. Some days Ekko sees her, other days he doesn’t. He hopes for a glimpse, even when he knows he shouldn’t. It should be easier to let go of what you never had, right?
His mural for Jinx grows. Other faces join her, people who died believing in her, surrounding the one they placed their trust in. And, at the centre of it all, her, her, her.
Still her.
Always her.
.
He’s not sure what arouses him. He hasn’t slept well in years, perpetual exhaustion clinging to him like a shawl. Some would call it the weight of living, no doubt.
There’s a shift in the air, a disturbance that’s not enough to make Ekko jolt awake and reach for a weapon, but enough to make his eyes flutter open. He breathes the cool air, pushing his grogginess away.
There’s a shape at the foot of his bed. Small and round. It takes several seconds for his vision to adjust, for him to realise that a hooded figure sits perched on his bed, knees pulled to their chest.
Ekko hasn’t had to rely on his battle instincts in two years, but there’s enough left in him to attack without hesitation. His fingers tangle in the cloak, shoving the figure down, his knee pressing harshly into their abdominal, hands seeking the intruder’s throat—
“Wow, little man, you sure know how to roll out the welcoming mat,” the all too familiar voice drawls before his fingers tighten instinctively around the slender, warm throat.
A haggard breath forces from Ekko’s parted mouth. In the wild struggle, the stranger’s hood has slipped down, revealing a familiar face with a startling crop of blue hair. His heart squeezes painfully, forcing him away from Jinx’s apparition.
“Leave me alone,” he croaks, rubbing his eyes till his vision swims. “Just leave me alone! I don’t want to see you anymore!”
“Huh, fine. I thought after two years, the welcome would be a tad warmer. Brrr.”
Ekko pushes himself to his feet, stumbling away, watching warily as the young woman sits back up, picking at her messy hair. She looks different. A little older than Jinx from his visions or memories. Her hair is longer, though nowhere near the same length she once had braided into two twin braids. She swings her leg back and forth, another pulled up to her chest while she watches him. And… her eyes. Ekko was the last person to see her with blue eyes before their battle on the bridge. The last time he saw Jinx alive, they were a dangerous, burning violet.
Now, even with the shade of the night, they’re a muddy mix between the blue he once knew, and the piercing violet that made her so deadly. As if that restless edge in her has calmed down and settled.
Ekko’s chest heaves as he stumbles back a step.
“Soooo—” she begins.
“You’re alive.”
Jinx shrugs her shoulders. “Yup. Clearly. In the flesh even,” she crows, but it’s more muted when compared to the wildness he once faced off against.
His hand flies to his stomach, and Ekko distantly wonders if he’s about to throw up in front of a girl he’s spent his entire life loving.
Mercifully, his stomach settles, but his heart beats so loudly he can hear the blood rushing in his skull.
“You’re alive,” he repeats, harder this time. “It’s been two years.”
“Yeah.”
She doesn’t offer more than that, but there’s a shadow over her narrow face. She’s healthier. There’s more weight on her bones, her skin has lost some of the pallidness. As if someone took Powder and Jinx, split them clean down the middle, and fused them into one body. Stronger, more self-reassured, less teetering on the brink.
“Would have written but mail is crappy where I was,” she jokes, her voice a familiar, drawling litany. “Besides, this is so much more mysterious—”
He closes the distance between them in two steps. His room isn’t big but he would have walked, ran, sprinted if needed to close the distance between them. His arms wrap around her and Ekko squeezes her so tightly he hears a small breath escape Jinx. She’s solid and warm. Smells faintly of sea and something metallic. Ekko buries his face in the soft crook of Jinx’s neck, gasping for breath.
“Woah, hero, you’re gonna break my ribs,” she whispers, but her arms wind around him, more careful, unsure. “I thought you hated me?”
Even when he releases her, Ekko’s hands linger on her, go to her face, examining her through the crack of light illuminating his room.
“I saw you,” he breathes, devastated. “I saw you everywhere. I hoped to see you everywhere.”
Something flickers over her face, an unknown thing, secretive and distant as she’s always felt to him.
“Geez, seeing things? And they call me crazy.”
“You’re not crazy.”
There’s such vehemence in his voice it startles them both. Jinx nibbles on her inner cheek, searching his face cautiously. “I thought you’d be mad.”
Ekko laughs, a low huff of amusement. “Do you think I care for you so little, huh?”
Too late he realises he’s without a shirt, and is, in fact, mostly bare before the girl he’s harboured a crush on for years. Near boyish shyness forces Ekko back, making him clear his throat. His hands tremble when he reaches for a discarded t-shirt, hoping it doesn’t smell bad when he pulls it over his head. When he glances at her over his shoulder, Jinx is still there, still watching him, though there’s a thoughtful air around her.
When she notices him looking, she offers him a sarcastic grin.
“No need to get shy, stud.”
“Shut up,” he grumbles.
He plops down on his unmade bed, watching her watch him. Her face is half hidden by her arms propped on her bent knee, but the silence between them isn’t awkward. They’re taking each other in, taking in the changes that have touched them both in the last two years.
“Why come back now?” he asks, eventually.
Jinx blinks, near feline-like, dropping her head back to stare at his ceiling as if it may offer an answer. “I’m a crappy friend, but not that crappy. Happy birthday, wonder boy.”
There’s a creak in his heart, a lightness in his ribcage, a balloon of affection despite their troubled history that inflates just for her. “You remember my birthday?”
She makes a sound at the back of her throat. Glances at him from the corner of her eye. “Well, we picked it together, silly, so sure I do.” Shadows fall over her features when she angles her head away. “I… I never thought I would come back—that it was better this way.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Something close to a smile ghosts over her face at his response. Ekko can’t rip his gaze away from her. He fears that if he does, he’ll wake up and she’ll be gone again, and he’ll have to relive the agony of losing her again.
“Does Vi—”
“No. No. And it’s better this way.”
“But—”
“Drop it, Ekko. Please.”
He does. Because this is too good to be true, and he doesn’t want this to end. Emotions mix inside him, battling for dominance, so he sits there, letting them all wash over him.
“You’ve been busy,” she says abruptly, nodding her head in the general direction of the outside world. “Their new wonder boy. I’m not surprised. You’ve always been good at creating things. Good things.”
“And you’ve always been good at fixing them,” he says.
Ekko thinks back on the countless times she helped him to fix up old rubbish others have discarded and sell them in Benzo’s shop as small treasures. It feels, now, like a lifetime ago. In a sense, it has been.
She snorts; it’s an ugly, hateful sound. “Not always.”
There’s weight to how she says it. Pain lingers in each syllable, more so a whispered confession. She’s thinking of others, those lost through accidents or her own direct involvement.
“I’m sorry about Isha,” Ekko says carefully, thumb pressing into the hollow of his bare knee. He itches to take her hand, to smooth his thumb over her knuckles instead, but he doesn’t. She’s never been his to touch. “Vi told me about her.”
Jinx shrinks, turning away and he mentally curses. A sore spot even years later. Understandably so.
“I… shit. Sorry.”
“What’s with the long face?” she exclaims suddenly, jumping to her feet and twirling. Her hands drop to her hips and she grins at him, all mischief. “C’mon, we gotta get out of here.”
Ekko squints. “Uh, what?”
“It’s your birthday, silly,” she says, like it should be obvious. “We’re going to spend the day together.”
.
Jinx keeps her hood up, her gait steady. Any sign of blue tucked away. She’s changed her attire to draw less attention, and as they walk in the hazy dawn light towards the bridge separating the sister cities, it feels almost normal. Casual. Not at all like the last time they spoke, they were about to fight side by side in a battle for their lives. Not at all like he spent two years thinking she’s dead. That still stings, but knowing how she felt back then, the state she was in before he talked her down from the edge, the pain she’s been through, Ekko can’t bring himself to feel resentful. He only wants to hold her and tell her it’ll be okay because she’s not alone.
“You’re not saying, are you?” he asks, hands in his pockets.
“Nope,” she replies, popping the p. “Can’t.”
Words rush to his tongue. Insistence that she can and should stay—that there’s space here for her, not just in his life, but in the new Zaun he’s helping to shape. He almost admits it to her then. That he’s built this for her and the ones they lost along the way.
Ekko continues walking, staring at the ground, noticing too late she’s fallen behind. He peers over his shoulder and freezes when he notices what’s caught her attention. The mural. Welcoming anyone coming into Zaun. Her face, slightly younger but now immortalised, peers back at them.
“You drew this.”
He loosens a breath. “Yeah, I did. I, uh, just…”
Jinx reaches for her own face, fingertips ghosting over the painted wall. There’s tension on her face when she turns to look at him, something piercing and hard and thoughtful. Same pinch to her eyebrows he saw earlier in his bedroom.
“I won’t let them take you,” he says softly. “If they came for you. I would fight for you.”
She doesn’t break their eye contact. “I know. You shouldn’t, but I know you would.”
“Then stay.”
She saunters forward, stopping only when they’re almost chest to chest. “I’m not her, y’know? The other me. The one you love.”
He smiles, huffing a small breath, refocusing on her and her small pout. Ekko reaches forward, tucking a few stray strands back under Jinx’s hood, lingering for a beat. “I wasn’t her Ekko, either. That’s why I came back. I like this version of you just fine. But just so we’re clear, every version of you is a pain in my ass.” He tugs on a small braid, grinning when she shoots him an annoyed glare and slaps his hand away. “But I won’t have it any other way. Wait, no. It sure as hell would be simpler if you didn’t try to kill me anymore, but I guess I’ll deal with that, too.”
Jinx snorts, absently reaching for the spot he touched, her gaze softer than before. “Ha! You hit like a girl, by the way. I never got to tell you.”
“You tried to blow us up.”
“Eh,” she whines. “That was one time. You gotta let that go.”
Ekko exhales a small laugh and realises he hasn’t smiled or laughed this much in years. Joy was leeched from him with her absence, and while he did his duties, there was no security of Jinx’s usual push and pull to keep him balanced and focused. Even when they were enemies, hunted each other down and attacked each other, they existed on opposite sides of a perfectly balanced sphere.
Her nearness, the relief of having her there, overshadows the darker recollection of that afternoon when she tried to blow them up more than once. Memories so painful Ekko wishes to scrub them from his mind forever, yet they remain seared into his psyche.
She grabs his elbow, dragging him forward, breaking the surrounding gloom. “Come on then,. Things to do, things to see.”
And Ekko does what he’s done since they were young. He follows her. Because they might not have tomorrow.
.
The day goes by too fast. Almost a blur. A series of snapshots Ekko will lock away in his mind forever. He never expected he’d get to do this again. This is something his younger self could have only dreamt about once. When they dreamt of simpler things; flashy toys and delicious sweets, things only a young boy could fantasise about, aside from a loving home, because at least that much he had.
They walked and talked and joked around, eating street vendor food all day. Ekko knows they’re pushing their luck, but he can’t help himself. Jinx grew up here. This is her home too, and he wants to show her the progress they’ve made. There’s something comfortable about her snarky commentary and ill-timed jibes at the Council members. She asks about Vi only once, in relation to Cait, and Ekko tells her the truth.
They’re happy. They’re together. She nods, satisfied, and moves on.
“We should go see Jericho next.” It’s an offhand suggestion while they walk the newly paved river path. Now people from the Undercity can enjoy the same luxury of having a peaceful sidewalk to take their kids down. It’s amazing how it’s the small things that bring people happiness.
“Can’t,” Jinx replies, glancing towards the setting sun. Her smile twists; it’s still a smile, but it’s sad, in a way. “Sorry, hero.”
He takes several seconds to speak. “So, you’re leaving anyway.”
“Yes. I told you I can’t stay.”
“It’s a pity, then.”
She tilts her head. “Why?”
Damn her for even asking. Damn her and all the shitty circumstances for keeping them apart. Damn her for picking him during that game of hide and seek years ago. Damn her for being there for him and not being there at the same time. Damn her for being his entire world for years. Even when Ekko thought he hated her, he wasn’t free of her. He never could be. His girl with blue hair.
He’s in love with her, in every possible way, but they both know they can’t work like this. There’s too many ghosts for Jinx here, and despite the changes, Ekko can’t promise her she won’t get dragged off to Stillwater the moment authorities find out she’s alive after all.
Ekko frowns, clenches his fists, and walks away.
But she’s like an anchor to him. He stops several paces away, tied to her. “You’re gonna break my heart.”
They’ve been everything from friends to enemies and strangers to reluctant allies again. So much of his life has revolved around her. Continues to revolve around her. Past and present. But if Jinx sends him away now, if she walks away, Ekko will let her go. Because he can finally rest easy, knowing she is alive and well, even if they’re apart.
“In any other universe, I might have loved you,” she breathes.
He pivots towards her, his nostrils flaring. “Love me in this one,” he insists, reaching for her. Ekko cups her cheeks, tilting her head until her hood slips back down, exposing her blue hair to the setting sun. He’s glad there’s no one in sight because he can’t think straight right now. “Choose me now. Ask me to go away with you. Ask me.”
He presses his forehead to hers. Jinx’s empty gaze appears glazed over, her thoughts far away no matter how hard he tries to grip her and hold her close.
“I don’t deserve you, boy saviour,” she whispers emptily. “You’re good.”
“No one decides for me, Jinx. Not even you.”
She blinks owlishly, searching his wild stare, a pained expression on her face, her fingers knotting against her chest. “What if you don’t want me after a while? I’m… different and if I get bad again... What if—”
“Ask me, damnit.”
Jinx loosens a shaky breath, jumping through a hundred micro-expressions in a few seconds. A painful mix between hope and dread.
“C…” Her eyes squeeze shut. “Come with me.”
Ekko sags in relief. “Yes.” He holds her, wraps his arms around her despite the unsure way she folds against him. As if she’s unsure where to put her hands. If she should. “Yes, I’ll come with you. I don’t care if you’re different. I want you as you are, okay? No matter where we are.”
A tremulous breath wheezes past Jinx’s lips. But with that, she melts into him, burying her face against him. Her embrace grows desperate and tight, a tremble shuddering through her body.
“Always a dance with you, huh?” he says after a moment.
She chuckles, the sound warming his collarbone. “And you still got two left feet, boy wonder.”
Constants and variables, young Ekko, Benzo told him once. Everything bad that can happen in this universe might come to pass, but so might everything good.