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Ekko felt the explosion lift him off of Jinx and throw him towards the side of the bridge. For a moment as Ekko laid on the ground, there was no pain, just an overwhelming sense of pressure from the left side of his torso all the way down to the leg. It wasn’t until he tried to stand up that it started to hurt. The moment he put pressure on his left leg pain exploded from it and he fell flat back on the ground. He tried to gasp out in pain, but this only brought another spike of torture as he felt his left lung burn in agony, and as he focused on the pain, he was sure that he could almost feel some liquid moving around in his damaged lung. Despite all the pain, he tried once again to get up, and when that failed he began to crawl, ignoring each burst of agony from his ruined leg. The strength of will it required for him to continue to push through this unbearable pain came from one thing and one thing only: the sight of the blue haired woman lying strewn out across the pavement, her limbs bent at awkward angles. Ekko crawled desperately onward until he all but collapsed at her side. His moan of pain as his body hit the ground roused Jinx and she slowly turned her head to look at him. She was not a pretty sight to behold, there were burn marks all over the right side of her face and even as she looked at him, her right eye didn’t open and behind the closed eyelid it almost looked sunken. For a long moment she just stared at him with one unblinking eye, and he stared back.
“Why… why didn’t you run?” She finally asked, her voice raspy and weak.
“And… leave you be…hind? Again? What… what kind of boy savior would I be then?”
Jinx let out a harsh laugh which quickly turned into a coughing fit. Ekko put a hand on her less damaged shoulder to steady her.
“Well if you didn’t notice, ‘Boy Savior’, you didn’t really save anyone today.”
“Maybe, but we’re here together now. You’re not… doing this alone.”
Jinx turned her head to look back up at the sky and after a moment Ekko did the same.
“Ekko?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you… do you think the next one will be better?”
Ekko took her hand in his and tried not to focus on the weakening pulse he felt from her hand as he began to answer.
“I hope so Powder. I hope so.”
And as his vision started to blur and then fade to black, for the first time in a long time, he felt tears begin to slide down his face.