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He knew time was passing. How could he not? But during the in-between moments, the moments of pause between moments of forward and back, it felt like time was racing past him all at once and at the same time like each second took a year. Everything happened all at once and never at the same time. It was disorienting and he wasn’t sure he could handle it for much longer.
If “longer” was even a concept that applied to him anymore.
He didn’t remember much of what he was seeing. There was just too much. He knew he’d seen the past, relived the present, and drifted through the future.
But, was it the future?
Or was it just the actual passage of time outside of himself inside of It ?
Was all he was seeing happening to him in a single moment? Or had he been trapped here for as long as the “future” he saw was happening? Was any of this real? Were his lucid moments when he felt the most real, just tricks in his mind as his body was eaten by It ?
If the “future” he saw fleeting glances of was real and time was passing him by, he’d guess it had been a few months since his last “present” moment. He’d seen what was happening in the real world.
He saw it all.
He saw Caitlyn prove him right as she became the worst kind of Piltover scum he knew she would be. He saw how Vi betrayed everything they had ever worked for. From Vander to himself. Becoming an enforcer and terrorizing the civilians. What he’d known as he lived it wasn’t even half of the shit those two had done.
He was being shown all the pieces he had missed to the puzzle he was a part of. At first It just showed him the pieces around himself that he missed. But then he caught sight of Her.
And once he saw Her it was like that was all he could see now.
For however long he had been stuck like this, he had been reliving the months, years, decades, and even centuries before the moment Jayce touched It . He saw the far past before he ever existed and also the moment he became part of It again and again on repeat.
But then It had shown him Her.
Shown him how She was connected to it all. How it all revolved around Her.
But.
And this was the most ironic part to him. Where in his moments of clarity, he laughed mockingly at himself. Wondering how that one decision had led to all of this. Led to Her and all She did.
But. It didn’t start with Her. There was a chance that maybe it would have still happened somehow. But the clarity was there. That everything that led to this, was because of him.
He was the one who struck the match that lit the fuse that was Her.
Before his interference, She was just some poor girl like any other.
Well, not just . Never to him. Not back then. Once upon a time he had dared to dream that someday She would look at him as more than just the junk shop boy who was good for a laugh and a fun time while the older kids ignored them and told them to go away. Back when they were the outsiders of their little gang by silly things like age. As if that was their only concern back then.
He’d once hoped that She would be by his side forever.
Forever. What a strange concept to him now. It felt like he’d been trapped in It for forever.
At first he had just been flung around from moment to moment with no control. But he hadn’t let It sweep him away. He fought back as much as he possibly could. Gaining the tiniest amount of control over his situation. It was practically nothing, but it was something.
He couldn’t tell It no. It still showed him whatever It wanted. Trying to beat some lesson into his brain that he just wasn’t capable of understanding. Showing him the same scenes again and again until he got the barest concept from the situation in front of him.
His control was only to be able to see more. In his pauses , his brief moments of rest between mental assault through time, he could choose to cut them short and pick a moment to watch and see.
It had found this funny at first. The first time he’d used the new scrap of control was to chase after Her as She walked away from a scene. He didn’t know why he did that. But he did and now It knew he had an interest in Her.
It had decided to taunt him with that at first. Showing him more and more of Her.
He’d hated the moments at first. His anger and raging grief at what She had destroyed and cost them all.
But then he actually watched and looked and saw, Her.
All the moments he had never known before. Moments that no one but Her were witness too. Things that made Her, well, Her.
The things that had changed Her from the girl he’d known and cared for and admired to the woman he hated and thought he was willing and ready to kill.
He was a powerless phantom as he saw everything that made Her.
The moments of pain, sorrow, rage, insanity, clarity, love, fear, and grief.
It was a cosmic joke that the moments he felt most alive and real, were the moments when he saw Her.
He started to escape his pauses as soon as he could to relive their childhood when everything was good. The moments where they laughed and cried and lived as children should.
Running from the dark moments that It didn’t let him hide from for long. Sometimes It was merciful. It would let him live through a solid year of their childhood in a heartbeat before throwing him into a never ending war that he was meant to observe and learn from.
Sometimes It was cruel and would show him Her at Her worst. The moments when Her pain was suffocating. Moments when no one else had been there to witness the tears and screams that escaped to echo into the abyss that only ever answered with cruel mockery of things he couldn’t see even know as they only ever existed in Her mind.
It loved to punish him for not getting the lesson It tried to teach him by showing him his greatest failure again and again. A moment he had driven to the farthest corners and recesses of his mind.
He’d thought himself so great. That he would be the shining knight of the storybook that could only have come from the pathetic topsiders who always had their heads so far up in the clouds he was shocked they could still breathe. He would be the daring prince to rescue the princess kept locked in the tower by the ugly monster and then they’d run away together to build their kingdom to defeat the monster. He’d even fantasized about getting to slay the monster himself and being named the king of it all.
Instead he had crawled his way into Silco's hideout, nearly getting caught and killed while covered in the foulest grime known to Zaun kind. He’d burst into the room the princess was being kept locked in, not even noticing the fact the door hadn’t been locked.
He gleefully scooped the princess into a hug full of joy and laughter at his success. He’d crowed and proudly declared, “I’m here to rescue you!”
Instead of the joyous celebration of his great success, he’d been met with a dead-eye stare.
“I don’t want to be rescued. I’m J̶̢̛̣̮̎͛̽̒̑̿͗̀̎̅̓̿̉̊i̶̢̢̨͙̘͎͇̯̱͈̠̮͊̓̀̓͋ņ̷̡̜͚̦̟̰͍̹̻̦̗̻̖͛͠ͅx̷̡̧̛̤̫̥̞̩͔̟̏͑͑̃̇̈̚͝ now.”
Those words haunted him even if for some reason It didn’t let him hear the exact words. More than anything else. He’d deny it to himself and never dare even think about it in the presence of others. But those words would always be his greatest failure.
Not even the slap to his face when he tried to pull Her out of there by force hurt as much as those words.
Everytime after reliving that memory, he would let It whisk him away to wherever it wanted without complaint. It would take him away to the far past in a land he’d never seen before to watch the downfall of another civilization. It was always too much. He could never remember what he had just seen once it was over. But he did it again and again.
He wondered if this was insanity. If his indifference to his unending existence showed a strong resilience or a shattered mind and he was just a fragment of what was left living in the haze of the afterlife.
It didn’t seem to understand his limits. Even if he did manage to understand the lesson It wanted to teach him, the lesson was soon lost under the flood of additional information. The sheer volume of information made it impossible for anything else.
Maybe that was why he clung so fiercely to Her. The moments with Her were the most real. Maybe it was the repetition, for surely if he’d watched it once he had watched and re-lived it a thousand times.
Everytime was like a breath of fresh, agonizing air as he followed Her through time.
It was a torture he brought unto himself to watch what happened to Her. To follow Her into the darkness until the moment of “present”.
He could not choose to see the theoretical “future”. The “future”, or everything that happened after being consumed by It, happened in disconnected flashes from a different perspective each flash.
Many of them surrounded Her. And those were his favorites. Moments when he got to pretend it was real and that She had possibly found a scrap of happiness in life again.
He fought hard to keep track of each flash that he got. To piece together the puzzle that he had once been a part of but now was forced to only observe.
It was hard. It didn’t want him to concern himself with the “future”. It wanted him to look at the past. But he refused to submit even if It punished him for it.
The flashes were becoming more erratic. More frequent also. The more he focussed on them, the more they happened. It wasn’t happy about that.
It tried harder to control him and force him to do what It wanted. He fought back.
The battle was timeless. Maybe an instant, maybe an eon. But he fought back.
He refused to be beaten into submission. He couldn’t give in. He had to fight back.
He had to remain strong. He had to fight, for Her.
He fought and fought until he could see the full moment. Could observe a conversation as it happened not in flashes spread across as eon.
It started to rage. It tried to tear him apart. But he was strong now. He had more control over It now.
He could watch more of the “future” with every won battle. And what he saw worried him. He saw Her and the Happiness that now followed in Her footsteps. How that happiness had two little feet of their own that dared to strike out and adventure where danger lay. He laughed as he realized that She had found a tiny new, unbroken , version of Her.
He watched and She and the Happiness lived in their own little bubble of joy while the world around them struggled. How the Happiness dared to spread their wings out to others. Conjoling Her to act and take up the mantle She did not want.
He saw as the Happiness was stolen away from Her and how the broken cracks the Happiness had filled, started to come undone.
No. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to do something. He had to help.
He had reached out to the moment in front of him but before he could reach them, he was attacked by It.
It raged stronger than It ever had before. By the time he beat It back the moment was gone. There was a new one. One he was surprised to see in front of him in the “future” but not surprised at the Things's existence. He had seen this past. The parts that had led to the possibility of this “future” but that still hadn’t prepared him to see Her next to the Thing.
He saw Her , the Happiness, and Vi with the Thing and marveled at this possibility in front of him. Then the “future” shifted showing him someone else.
He saw, observed, and watched and felt his gut clench.
….
A strange sensation he had not felt since his last moment of “present”.
He had not felt any bodily sensation since then. Only emotional.
Strange.
He watched them and fended off attacks by It. Sometimes It would distract him enough for the “future” to progress significantly.
He could feel the tension of the “future” rising with each glance he took. Something was building. And he didn’t know what. All the “past” he had studied and the “future” he had observed and there was still something he was missing.
And then the “future” broke. The screams were present in his ears as the Thing was stolen from Her and the Happiness.
He had to do something. He couldn’t stand by and let Her face this suffering.
It tried to refuse. Trying to distract him again but he refused.
He was in control now.
He could feel it. The potential. The possibility. But he didn’t want it. What he wanted was out there. Outside of It.
He felt as It made one last offer. It proposed that he become Him and that It would become it.
But he cared not for the offer as the Happiness once again proved that Her and the Happiness were a perfect match.
The Happiness was set to sacrifice for Her.
Willing and prepared and at peace.
But he couldn’t let that happen. It would break Her.
And he couldn’t let Her break anymore. He had let Her break too much already.
He saw as the Happiness smiled and signaled to Her all the love that the Happiness had for Her.
Oh Happiness.
He would make sure you smile again.
He reached out and with a soft touch, reached through the veil that had kept him from them for so long.
He felt the tear as he separated himself from It. Leaving behind the possible things he could have. He didn’t want all that It had to offer. He was perfectly fine with what he could get for himself. He didn’t need anything more than that.
It was a loud affair. To tear the fabric of reality and separate himself from It .
It made one final attempt but he brushed it off like a leaf from his tree. He didn’t need the knowledge of It to succeed. He had more than that in himself.
He felt the final thread wrap around his wrist and only smirked as he took the chance and cut the thread from It. Severing his connection with It.
The Wildrune.
Suddenly he was aware.
Of the things that had been blocked from his mind as he was trapped. The things that the Wildrune had fought so desperately to erase from his mind since it knew he would fight at nothing to get back to them.
A moment. And suddenly he was aware again.
This time of the things around him. Of the situation he had just thrown himself into. He breathed, and moved.
He grabbed Isha and then snapped the watch- that he hadn’t realized he was holding- closed in order to throw them back just enough that when he spun and buried her tiny body beneath his as the explosion went off, they were far enough away that the searing heat against his back was painful but tolerable. But it was enough to know that Isha would be okay.
That the Happiness would be okay.
That Her Happiness would be okay.
Her.
Her.
Jinx.
Jinx who was Powder who had been the girl who became the woman who had become Her.
Jinx who he hated yet couldn’t let go of. Couldn’t abandon no matter how many times he swore he had.
Whether they were kids on his cycle flipping off enforcers, or barely pre-teens in Silco's secret hideout, or angry teenagers meeting across the battlefield the first time, or young adults angry at the world gunning to take the other out and be rid of the past for good.
He saw her. All of her. And he hated it. Because he saw his own failures and her pain and the ways he could have done better but hadn’t and now was faced with the sum of the actions both of them had taken. He hated it because he saw her in himself when he stared in a mirror and wondered who the fuck he was to try and lead others and take their lives into his hands and make himself responsible for their survival.
He saw her and knew that she didn’t know him because he had refused to try again after that first failure. But he had chosen Her.
And maybe she would want nothing to do with him. As was her every right, because Janna knew he had messed up and caused her pain as well when she was already hurting. But maybe, just maybe, this time he could do it right and have a chance.
Have a chance to get to know her as she wanted to be known. Maybe, just maybe, he would have a chance to live the unknown future and change with her.
He had seen the past. Had lived it again and again. But that was the past.
He was in the now. He was back in the present for the first time since Jayce touched the Wildrune all those months ago. And he wouldn’t squander it for anything.
He relaxed his hold on Isha as he felt the heat dampen and fade from his back. As he pushed up on his arms enough to meet Isha’s wild eyes filled with disbelief and shock and fear of the unknown future she was so sure she was abandoning.
“ISHA!” The scream was visceral and immediately followed by him being thrown back as Isha was torn from him and into the arms of Jinx who managed to hold Isha to her as tightly as possible while also checking her over for injuries at the same time.
Ekko just sat back on the ground and watched as Jinx pressed a sobbing, relief filled kiss to the top of Isha’s head after assuring that her Happiness was okay.
He may have just miraculously torn himself from the clutches of the Wildrune, all with no ill effect mind you, but he could wait for his attention as he reveled in the fact they were real and that he was still alive to face the unknown future.
There was devastation all around them, but as long as his people were alive they would recover. Maybe not the same as before. Maybe broken beyond complete repair. But they would continue. As was the demand and unstoppable path of Time.