Chapter Text
It burned. Through skin, bone and soul it burned. Blue light that seared through hopes, dreams and life itself, rendering every fragment of it into ash.
Jinx screamed but she had no mouth to speak, no lungs to breathe and no ears to hear. Her eyes melted in her skull; the last image they saw too horrendous to conceive. For a moment terror she couldn't understand consumed her; then she was burning, burning underneath that arcane blue that had no care whether it burned the innocent or guilty alike, friend or foe, through brothers, a father, a daughter-
Her skin melted into sludge and her bones turned to ash, with pride, shame, joy and grief all rendered void; all gone, yet she still burned. It burned and seared her till she was ash, but even that was not enough. Blue flame ripped from her chest her very life itself, torn and burned into nothing, yet even after taking everything the flames still didn't let her rest. Jinx screamed more than she ever screamed before, more than when purple poison seeped into her veins, every cell within her reborn in inhuman glory, more than when her sister threw Powder into a well and Jinx was born to break her fall. A birth filled with hate and pain and terror and -PLEASE DONT LEVE ME! She cried and screamed, the shattered pieces of her heart that a golden-eyed girl stitched together unraveled into nothing. She screamed as the child that was the air in her lungs melted away like wax beneath that arcane light.
-And shimmer burned in her veins, as a boy shattered time!
Jinx didn’t remember dragging Vi’s bleeding body away. She didn’t remember enforcers throwing her into a cell. It wasn't worth remembering. It was neurons and space in her shimmer riddled skull that couldn’t dare be spent on anything but her child's last moment. Isha’s last smile before those –rotten, thieving blue gems that WONT STOP TAKING, TAKING, PLEASE STOP TAKING THEM FROM- burned her away. Caitlyn had visited, visited and refused to kill her, because the girl was a weak entitled coward who lacked the bile needed to do what was right, to set Vi free.
It was almost comical, how painfully optimistic Vi was, how she was, despite everything, so sure that Jinx could change. So happy, so hopeful, so sure that Jinx was somehow good, that the poison in her veins wouldn’t leak out into the world.
Vi would never be able to let her go. It was like trying to separate light from shadow, love from grief. No matter how much shit Jinx did, no matter how far she ran, no matter how many times she hid, Vi would always keep looking for her. The small glimpse of Powder that seeped out of Jinx when Isha was still in her arms was all Vi needed, all Vi needed to hold onto the hope that her sister was still in there. But...Vi could never truly love Jinx. Vi loved the Powder she saw in Jinx, the moments of when they were still kids, of when everything was perfect.
“Don't cry. You’re prefect.”
“- But you changed to.”
No. Vi never changed. She still loved her sister more than her own life, more than anything that walked the earth. But the girl she used to love was gone. Broken and beaten under pain and guilt, stitched together with explosives and neon lights; and when Powder fell, with nothing but the desire to die left in her heart, to die with her brothers and father, it was Jinx who pulled her up.
Vi didn’t deserve to be haunted by her failures, be forced to confront her shortcomings every time shimmer danced in Jinx’s eyes. No one did. Vi was brave, kind, and too willing to die for the thing that stole her sister's face, and no matter how many times she unknowingly broke Jinx’s heart it was impossible for Jinx to hate her. Jinx knew the agony she was about to cause by wrenching her fist into Vi’s stomach, right where the wound was still raw, but it wasn't as much as it would have should she have stayed.
“There’s no good version of me.”
There was only way in which Vi moved on, only one way in which she let the ugly and damaged shards of her sister slip through her fingers, slip away and cease tearing into her hands.
“The only way to break the cycle, is to walk away.”
Jinx would walk away. There was nothing holding her back, no dad to look at her with pride- Would Silco’s body wash ashore someday, bloated and filled with decay? Was Vander’s corpse left to rest after a second time? - No brothers left to haunt her, for once silent in her head, and no little girl to look at her like the stars themselves were crafted by her hands. Only her sister remained. A sister that would never be free unless Jinx set her free. Maybe... Maybe death is like falling asleep.
Isha loved Jinx’s hair, more so than even Jinx did. Jinx never cared how she looked, she was all malnourished bones with muscle stretched far to tightly beneath her skin. But her hair was something precious to her. A monument to Powder and the years spent by her sister's side, when Vi, for a moment, left behind her fury and tightened fists as she braided blue hair. Gentle and soft like she always wanted to be before the world taught her to throw a hard punch and take an even harder one to the face.
“Hair can hold... Memories.” When she was Jinx instead of Powder, it was Silco instead of Vi who styled her hair. Only after his death did Jinx wonder if Silco always knew how to braid her hair, or if he learned for her sake only, a skill learned to accommodate Jinx’s refusal to let go of Powder. More than once Jinx woke up with small hands playing with her braids, the long threads curled around Isha like an embrace, the girl giggling when Jinx pulled her closer. Late at night when Piltover slept and Zuan didn’t have the leisure to, Isha would sometimes help pull out her braids, full of animated smiles and nervous gestures only Jinx was privileged to behold, a language privy only to two, forged by a child whose voice the Grey stole years ago.
Slicing it off was impulsive, a base need to suffer, to lose something she held dear as punishment for the crime of promising a child safety, and in turn being her death. The sight of the blue hair that Isha loved so much lying still and severed on the ground made her scream and tear into it, regret and shame pooling in her gut as she helplessly scooped up the strands, cradling bundles of it in her arms as if holding something Isha loved would plug the tear inside her that her soul kept leaking through.
The Last Drop was her home, once, a lifetime ago, now it was just burning ruble. Was this how Vander felt? As his body burned, as lave spilled open from him, his mind’s last fragments burned away. Did he feel the same sense of loss she did as the home that held so many memories burnt into ash.
Pondering was useless. She would be able to ask him very soon.
The scribbles on her bomb were careful, far more careful than she normally was, but it was cathartic almost. Jinx was full of too much static energy, too many untamed twitches, the fury of Zuan in her veins, their shame, resentment and the sheer fucking humiliation they felt coursing through her with every pump of shimmer in her dead heart. She supposed Vi might find her body, if there was one- Isha was gone, there was nothing left, only ash and dust and her father’s still corpse - but Jinx doubted it. She was destruction and death, and the only thing she hadn't jinxed was how to blow shit up.
If she could just lay down her head and rest, maybe... Just maybe she could be free.
She pulled the pin and the Chemtech inside the bomb ignited; chemicals arranged with the sole purpose of annihilation. The blue gem cracked and shattered under the stain, blue flames and smoke licked her face, almost as if Isha was kissing her cheek one last time. She could almost pretend that the heat melting her skin was a child cradled in her arms. Maybe having the same cursed light be their end would bring them together in another life. Maybe death would finally free her from her curse, let her love without the all consuming fear of loss. The light was blinding and so, so, so calming, an all excepting nothingness that-
-And shimmer burned.
“Wait!”
Jinx froze. That wasn’t possible! That voice was dead, she killed him.
“I just want to talk!” There was no mistaking his voice. She heard it every time she closed her eyes.
“Get out of here Ekko.” She didn't need any hallucinations of the family she murdered right now.
“I just-” Jinx pulled the pin-
-And shimmer burned.
“I just want to talk to you Pow-Jinx!" Powder was dead. Dead like Jinx, dead with her child that she never got to bury. Ekko didn't want her; he only wanted the ghost of the girl he once called ‘friend.’
Jinx pulled the pin-
-And shimmer burned.
“Your too late Ekko.” Her finger wrapped around the pin.
“Wait!” Jinx pulled-
-And shimmer burned.
“Always a dance with you.” Something wasn't right. Her mind felt... Off? Why wasn't she dead. “I'm just going to...” Ekko gestured to a spot on the ground. He looked... worse? That wasn't right. Something wasn't right. “See if I can talk an old friend out of blowing us up.” That's not what she wanted. Well, yea she wanted to blow herself up, but not him.
“I'm tired of talking.” Below her was pitch darkness, fathoms of ventilation that ended in a literal minefield of years of discarded explosives. That was a fitting grave she supposed, dead among her own creations. She leaned forward-
-And shimmer burned.
“You know, I learned from someone, very special,” Special, she was special to him, once, before Jinx was born and Powder became a memory. “That no matter what happened in the past, it's never too late to build something new.” He was looking at her, and the part of Jinx that still wanted to be loved swore he was looking at Jinx, not Powder. “Someone worth building it for.”
Ekko’s voice sounded far too tired. “Just, I can’t let this be goodbye." Her eyes glance down at the strange device at Ekko’s side. It's not the singularity of wrongness buzzing in the center that catches her eyes and stills her hands, no, it's the monkey ornaments that she knows by heart.
“Ekko... I tried.” Jinx’s throat burned on the choked down tears. “I tried. I gave my everything, really, I did. My everything just wasn’t good enough.” She faced him, really faced him, no half turns and steeled glances. Shimmer pink ran down her face even though she swore she had no more tears to cry. “I really tried to be good. I swear I did, there just can’t exist a good version of me, no version where I'm not a monster.”
Because that was what she was, wasn't she? Only monsters could kill their own fathers. Only monsters could be stabbed, shot, burned, cursed and left to die and still come back to kill some more. Only a monster could live when a little girl did not.
Ekko took a hesitant forward. “No good version? Can’t exist? Don’t try to blame everything you’ve done on a ‘I’m just made this way.’ You chose to bomb the council; you chose to side with Silco. You chose to kill my friends. Those were your choices, and no matter what the circumstances were, that fact doesn't change.”
“I though you didn't want me blowing us up.”
“You chose to do those things, and you can choose to be better than you were. Jinx, I know there are people who have given up on you, condemned you for who you became, hell maybe even Vi has left you, and I know for years so did I. But I swear to you.” Ekko’s hand reached down to the monkey bomb in her hands, and gently, gentler than she could remember him ever being, peeled it from her hands. “I swear to you never again. No matter what you do, I will always, always be there for you. No more running from you.”
She didn't get it. She was supposed to walk away. End the cycle and set everyone free. So why was Ekko of all people stopping her?
“Ekko. You don't understand. I lost my- my- I lost something I don’t want to live without.” How could she explain. How could she tell Ekko of the void in her chest that wouldn't close, that burned and ached so deeply that she knew even death could only dampen the sting. What words could explain the feeling of having lost everything she had ever dared to dream of; late nights in bed years ago imagining Vi and Vander holding her again, with Powder in her arms shielded from all the vileness of life. How could Jinx put into words the sheer, intangible agony of watching it all burn.
“Have you ever had a dream, Ekko, and you know it has to be a dream because it's too perfect to be real, but you still cling to it, because you know the moment you wake up, it's all going to go ‘Pew’”
“Jinx.” Ekko was too close to her now, his presence suffocating. “I do. I... I had this dream. In it there was Vander, Mylo, And Claggor,” His voice got quiet. “Powder... And Vi. Even... Even Silco was there by Vander‘s side. The undercity was clean, with Piltover and Zuan working together for a better world.”
“It sounds nice.”
“It was. It was almost everything I had ever wanted and more.”
“Almost?”
“Yea. Almost. You ever have that moment of, I don't know, realization? That all your life you've been seeing the world in monochrome, like a still image in a photograph, and suddenly you can see properly? Like you put on glasses and for the first time you can see how things actually look, and you feel so stupid for wasting even a single second on things that don't matter. Jinx, I feel like I’m seeing the world in color for the first time, and when I look back at how the monochrome me treated you, I want to kill him, because I can finally see you clearly and how breathtaking you are. I wasted so many years wanting you to be Powder again because I never realized that a world can only be perfect if Jinx is there.
“But... Mylo, Claggor, the firelights... I killed them."
“I know... For a long time I won't lie I hated you. But we were kids. Don't you remember how small we were? Me, you, Vi, we didn't know what we were doing.”
“It was my bomb. My hand that set it off.”
“Jinx... You were a child; it's not your fault.”
Something cracked inside of her. In her memory she could see Vi standing over Powder, tears and blood streaming down her face. Except it wasn’t Vi. It was a little girl, barely in her teens, next to her dying father, the blood of dead brothers she couldn't save staining her clothes. Before her was an even smaller girl, with blue hair and periwinkle eyes, -and all of a sudden the Powder in her mind was a seven-year-old child with golden eyes and -
Jinx’s heart shattered. She curled down on the floor and sobbed. Her chest heaved and her throat choked as tears and mucus mixed in her mouth. “I- I only wanted to help. I ONLY WANTED TO HELP! I just wanted to help my family! I didn't want to hurt anyone; I just wanted my family back.” It burned in her heart, the guilt and resentment she festered for almost a decade, the ever-returning feeling that she deserved to rot for their deaths. But the guilt wouldn’t stick. The relief that came from guilt, the feeling that she was being punished for crimes against them, that their deaths were being avenged, never came. Because how could she blame a child, no older than her own daughter, for just wanting to help. Could she blame Isha for her decision? For the pain Jinx felt losing her? Jinx should have watched her better, told her to stay back, and done a million things differently. Isha just wanted to help, and no matter what could have happened Jinx would have never blamed her. Not if Jinx died in the blast, not if Vi, not if Mylo and Claggor and been resurrected just to die again.
“I know Jinx. We were kids who just wanted to help, but the world didn't let us. But sometimes... Sometimes moving forward means leaving a few things behind.”
Could she do that. Leave it all behind? Leave behind the family that died by her hands?
“Jinx...I think the cycle only ends, when you find the will to walk away.”
Perhaps, perhaps death wasn't walking away. Maybe walking away was simply letting go. She thought of the ghosts of Mylo and Claggor in her mind, permanently reminding her that they died while she got to live. She thought of Vi in her jail cell, forever doomed to chase someone she would never find. She thought of Vander, both the man and the wolf. She thought of Silco and his last words-You're perfect- how even by her hands his last breath was to comfort her.
Jinx thought of them all and found it so strangely easy, the desire to leave it all behind, build something new, move on from the damaged child she was, and heartbroken woman she became.
But...
Jinx stumbled over to her workbench, Ekko right behind her. She picked up the crudely drawn picture of a blue haired girl and her equally colored mother with twin braids that were much larger than they were in life.
“I can't move forward from this.” Ekko said nothing, and for a moment Jinx could pretend they were Powder and Little Man again and that his shoulder was there to collect her tears. “I don't think I even want to try.” Pretending wasn't even hard with his hands cradling her head.