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“Thought I might find you here, little man.”
Ekko startled at the sound of Vi’s voice, blinking from the peaceful serenity of the silence swathing the Firelight’s Tree. The hideout was empty, for the time being; people were desperate to reunite with whatever was left of their families after the fight with Noxus, and were scattered all across Piltover, from the undercity to above.
Ekko, though? He didn’t have anyone, anymore. Scrawling Powder’s name, followed by Jinx’s, on that little slip of paper and letting it go in a breath of flame had been finding his solace in knowing that.
He was alone, no one left to care about him; he had to do that for himself, and that was fine. It was what he always had done, since Benzo had died, and Powder, and Vander and the others. He was fine on his own — and he was on his own.
Leave it to Vi to prove him wrong.
She always had been stubborn like that.
“Figured you’d come and bother me eventually,” Ekko grunted out in response, even though it wasn’t true; the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind, that someone would care. He tossed his cans of spray-paint to his feet, where they landed with a clatter on the ledge he was working on, before jumping down to Vi’s side, ignoring the way his body — still sore from the battle, even though it had been days, and arguably more so from being yanked through space and time over and over again with each pull of the chain — groaned and protested.
His boots thudded heavily against the ground that he hadn’t touched all morning — or was it afternoon, or night? — since climbing up the tree to his painting ledge and beginning to work. He nearly swayed, but caught himself, leaning back against a root and arching a brow towards Vi, who was looking at him with uncomfortable sympathy.
“Haven’t seen you since . . . the battle,” she said, neither of them voicing what they were both thinking: since Jinx died. “How’re you holding up, Ekko?” There was something in her voice, something soft that he couldn’t quite place, that hadn’t been there before — or perhaps it had, he considered, and she just had never felt safe enough to let it show.
“As well as you’d expect,” Ekko muttered. He didn’t meet her gaze, or maybe couldn’t. He thought that he might’ve gotten too used to the idea of her being dead that he could barely come to terms with her being alive — whereas with Powder, with Jinx, it was the opposite, to the point that he kept wondering where she was, when she was going to climb up beside him and give him a toothy grin and probably ruin her own face on the mural wall with pink spray paint.
Ekko shook the image away, grief clenching at his heart. “How ‘bout you?” He asked, if only to give himself something to do besides think.
“Yeah. Same.” Vi’s gaze slid past him, and flicked up to the mural. “S’pose you’ve been expanding the — on the . . .”
Her voice trailed away with a sharp little intake of breath, and Ekko winced, staring down at his hands that were stained in blue as if, should he look intensely enough, he would once more see Powder’s slim fingers intertwining with his own, pulling him along to the music and urging him to dance, her laughter on his lips.
When she managed to speak again, Vi’s voice was taut, almost choked. She stepped forward, then hesitated, as if she were frightened to get too close.
“Ekko, what . . .?”
“Just — been imagining, I guess,” he murmured. “What things . . . could’ve been like.”
He lifted his gaze up towards the mural, where he had painted — over the image of himself that had been crafted by the Firelights after he had disappeared — Powder. Not his Powder, the Powder who had died when Jinx had been born (or so he had thought); but the Powder he had known, however briefly, in the other universe.
The Powder he had had the privilege to love, if only for a few moments.
(In the days since the battle, he had often found himself wondering, as he had painted in silence, if he should have stayed. If — for once in his life — he should have chosen to be anything other than the Boy Savior.
But it wasn’t in his blood to put himself first, and that didn’t change no matter how much of it he shed.)
“She looks . . . happy,” Vi said softly, where she stood at his side.
“She was,” Ekko responded — absurdly, he knew, to her, but achingly true to him, as he gazed up at Powder, with her shining smile and her bright eyes that he had so adored over his weeks with her. “I’m — I’m sure of it,” he added on hastily, if only so that he didn’t get sent back to a healer to get his brain checked. “If things had gone . . . differently.”
(Jinx had been happy at the end, too, at least when she and Ekko had been preparing the airship. She had seemed at peace, almost; as if trying to blow herself up, over and over, had brought her some sort of unconscious solace. She had smiled, some. She had laughed, as she had drawn with childish crayon all over his armor, and he had let her.
She had seemed more like Powder than he had ever thought she could.
But if things had gone differently, she could have still been Powder. Still been the girl who smiled with happiness, true happiness; not temporary peace found in the pin of a grenade.)
“I wish they had,” Vi whispered to him. Her eyes were glistening, and Ekko winced at the unfamiliar sight, the vulnerability that seemed to only ever reach the tough-as-nails Vi when in regards to her sister. “God, I wish . . .”
She trailed away, but Ekko understood — more than anyone else ever could. He placed a gloved hand on her shoulder, and sighed.
“I know,” he said simply.
(He didn’t tell her about Powder; about their time (never enough of it) spent building, experimenting, inventing — laughing, smiling, dancing — their time spent with one another, in the ways Ekko and his Powder had never got to have, before she had been Jinx and he had been the Boy Savior and they had been too separated, too far apart, to ever dream of becoming anything like what he had experienced in that other universe.
He didn’t tell her about the others — about Claggor, and Mylo, and Vander and Silco and Benzo.
He didn’t tell her about herself.
It was simultaneously the most selfish thing he had ever done, and the most selfless.)
“Can I . . . help?” Vi asked him, her voice still soft, pulling Ekko from his thoughts. He said nothing at first, but pulled out another can of spray paint from his pocket, and tossed it to her, dropping his hand from her shoulder to cross his arms over his chest. He hesitated for a moment, then spoke again, voicing an idea he had been mulling over, in the silence of the cavern.
“I was thinking,” he said. “What if we opened this place up to the whole of the undercity — made it a true memorial? We could . . . let everyone come here to mourn, to . . . to craft the ones they’ve lost into the walls? I watched the ceremony, with the flames, and it was beautiful, but . . . we ought to pay more of a tribute. We lost too many, and too many have lost; grief is the beginning of rebuilding.” Ekko hadn’t realized how much he believed those words, until he had spoken them.
Grief was the beginning of rebuilding.
And with Vi here . . . he had someone to rebuild with.
“I think,” Vi said softly — and then it was her turn to place her hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly, a reassurance promising him that she wasn’t going anywhere — “that Powder would have loved that.”