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Jinx
He has her pinned down. He has full control and he uses it to strike her relentlessly. She loses track of time. She loses sense of self. Jinx just flails and flails, grasping for anything to strike, anything to latch onto.
And just like every other time she has reached out in hope, her fingers find nothing to hold onto.
The boy she had played with and cherished as children is gone, replaced by the pathetic so-called Boy Savior. Ekko is a hopeless idealist now. Zaun would never be the home he wanted it to be, the home he needed it to be.
This city can never be more than rubble and poverty as long as Jinx is alive, because she loves this city too, and she destroys everything she ever loves. That destruction is all she has ever known. The hopeless idealist would have to kill her if he ever wants his dream realized.
She knows this truth deep within her bones, and in a sick, twisted way, she needs Ekko to know this truth too. She needs someone to see her for who she truly is. Her broken, brutalized self, the version that she sees when she looks in the mirror. The one who deserves this pain. The one who knows she's not crazy, she just understands how truly broken she is and accepts it into the very fiber of her being.
But all this pain is too fucking much right now. All she ever wanted was to have her sister back. But she saw the way that Vi looked at her, how she walked away. Vi is terrified of her, terrified of who she has become.
Deep down, Jinx understands. The monster that is raging beneath her skin is an intimate, fully-ingrained part of her being. Of course no one could love this thing inside of her.
From her belt, she pulls out a grenade. This one will burst out a flurry of bright pink clouds. She decides that that's how she wants to go, in a whirlwind of color.
Then she lets her walls come down. She ends her raging, desperate need to survive and tries to tell him Just let me die, but the words never leave her lips. And Ekko interprets something completely different.
"Powder…" The whisper is barely audible. A weak plea from a weak man holding onto the past.
A shard of anger at that name buries itself into her chest and solidifies her decision. After all the cruelty that she has put him through, how dare he not finally understand? She has killed dozens of his people, his so-called friends, yet he still holds onto the name of that dead child? He doesn't even notice her pulling the pin.
Powder was a frail, pathetic failure, just like Mylo knew all along.
Powder is dead.
She should stay dead.
Ekko
All of this suffering, years and years of suffering, for this? God damn it, when does it end?
He doesn’t want to keep striking her, but this adrenaline, this rage is taking all control.
He is furious at Silco, furious at what he has done to Powder, furious at the world for allowing that psychopath near their family.
Finally, he stops to look at her. To really look at her. Somewhere trapped behind the lies that she tells herself is that little girl who just wanted to do the right things for the people she loved.
“Powder…” He whispers, calling out to the hidden parts of her that he knows are still there.
Then he sees the grenade slip from her delicate fingers,
And realizes it’s too late to save them both.
"NO!!"
Ekko swipes his hand under the grenade and throws it outward. He doesn't have time to care where it flies.
With only one second left before it detonates, he wraps his own body around Jinx as a protective shell.
It detonates in the air just meters away from them, sending shockwaves to rip through his eardrums and shrapnel to tear through his arms and legs.
His bulletproof vest protects his vital organs, but the damage is still far too great.
Everything stings with such intense, excruciating pain.
He's bleeding out.
He can see her speaking, but all he hears is ringing. All he can see are her agonized but beautiful blue eyes welling up with tears.
And then he sees and hears nothing at all.
Jinx
Her hands tremble. Her breathing shudders. Her eyes search for meaning.
"Wh- why?" Jinx stammers.
She watches his eyes lose focus and his breathing become more labored. She knows that Ekko can't answer her as he loses consciousness, but the desperation to understand what just happened overcomes her anyway. This raw, unadulterated desperation consumes her.
"Why why why… WHY!?"
Screaming comes easier than sobbing, so she releases a raspy, guttural scream until it tears at her throat, until Ekko's body falls limp over her and presses the air out of her lungs. When she can no longer scream, she holds Ekko even tighter against her and sobs hopelessly into his neck. Hot tears cloud her vision and layer between his skin and hers.
"Damn it… Damn you…"
She wanted to die. She didn't care if they died together. But it wasn't supposed to happen like this. How dare he take away her choice.
She mourns the chance to finally be free, to die on her own terms with a death she deserved. Then she realizes she's also mourning him. Even as enemies, he was a constant in her life, a challenge that centered her in the moment. Their fights were some of the most exciting times of her life and at least when they were at each other's throats, the voices in her head were finally silent, even for a short while. Maybe that's why she never finished the job of killing him.
Jinx hears his stupid, carefree laugh in her mind, from back when they could afford to be stupid and carefree. Back when he was just that cute boy collecting scrap. Back when they weren't these twisted, corrupted copies of themselves.
Everyone she has ever loved betrayed her, stabbed her in the back and twisted the knife. She had thought she deserved it and that cut even deeper. She had thought that was the peak of her suffering. But now everything hurts. Every fiber of her being. Every deep, distorted part of her mind. And she can't tell which agonies hurt worse.
If he had just let her die she wouldn't have to feel this pain. Why does she always have to feel so much pain?
Jinx stays sobbing into him for what feels like an eternity. It feels like she's suffocating, so maybe this is how she can finally die. Slowly. Painfully. The acceptance of death is the only thing keeping her from losing the last of her sanity right then and there.
But then she feels his chest rise slightly. He's still breathing . She presses her ear to him to listen and it's the most beautiful sound she's ever heard.
The clamor of incoming enforcers ruins her chance to appreciate the moment. The enforcers had already put a bullet into Ekko and they would gladly put one in her. Jinx was willing to let him kill her, or let them both die together. But she refuses to let them be killed by some damned enforcers in a moment of weakness.
Newly invigorated and frantic, she twists underneath Ekko's unconscious body to look for her guns. They are nowhere to be seen. They must have been knocked off the bridge during the fight and she didn’t bring many grenades. She has to run but there's no way she can carry him alone to safety in time.
Without thinking, Jinx forces his weight off of her so she can reach for his hoverboard. She has no idea how to use it. Regardless, she brings it to Ekko and points it in the direction of the Undercity. Then she lifts him onto it and crawls over him. The machine is icy against her knees and forearms, but thankfully, Ekko is still warm beneath her.
Her eyes glance over the mess of exposed circuitry and coolant systems. Then she pushes the first button she can find and is rewarded with whirring noises and a green glow lighting up her hands and Ekko's face. The machine lifts them off the ground steadily, as if it needs to get its bearings. Jinx realizes it must be calibrating.
"Oh my God, what happened here…" A male enforcer's voice rings in the distance.
"It's her! Open fire! Don't let her escape!" One enforcer lifts her rifle and the others follow suit.
Jinx is out of time. Just as bullets begin to fly all around her, the hoverboard lurches forward like a bull, nearly knocking both of them off. She has no control, she just desperately grips the board to keep them from falling as they accelerate over the river, away from the enforcers that want to kill them both and towards the familiar streets of Zaun.
The jet trail they leave paints a glowing brushstroke behind them. Then without meaning to, they climb higher and higher above the city. As they soar, the lights of the city spread out below them like a sea of candles underneath a sea of stars. It's stunning. It's alive. It would be terrifying to soar at this height if it wasn't so beautiful.
She can see why the Firelights love flying so much. She had heard that Ekko invented the hoverboards, but never realized how amazing they were, never realized the incredible things that Ekko was capable of until now.
Suddenly the hoverboard swings downward and she clamps onto Ekko to keep him from falling into the polluted river. Her arms are sore from holding on and she still can't steer, so as they plummet towards the Undercity she can only barely pull up on the board to slow them down.
She has to jump or they’ll both die in this crash. She lifts Ekko up just barely and presses one unsteady foot against the board, then she kicks with all her strength. Right before the hoverboard slams into the concrete road in an angry flurry of sparks, the pair tumble off. But this time, Jinx protects Ekko, wrapping around the unconscious man and using her body to shield him from the impact. As they fall from the sky, she doesn't care if his blood smears all over her. She doesn't care that the concrete is tearing open her skin and that their combined weight is crushing her.
When their bodies roll to a stop, Jinx lets herself slow down from the madness that just happened. She can finally breathe again, even though her ribs hurt with each breath. She checks on Ekko. He's still alive. He's still alive.
She must look insane right now. Knots in her braids came undone during the fall, so now her loose, frizzy blue threads swing as she moves. She's also covered in dirt and bruises and the blood of another person. Not to mention, there's an unconscious body laying next to her on an empty street in the middle of the night.
Jinx laughs slowly in a deep treble, even as it hurts her chest. It's a dry, sardonic laugh.
The irony is that right now, she is more lucid than she has felt in a long, long time.
Right now, there is only one thing that matters. The single-minded drive to keep Ekko alive is keeping her focused and keeping her sane.
I can't believe that just happened… Ekko… You bastard…
When he took her own death away from her it was one more betrayal to add to the years of pain they’ve inflicted on each other.
And yet, even though she refuses to admit it, she is so grateful that he's alive.