Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

i.

Ekko wasn’t sure of much these days. 

He hadn’t been sure of almost anything since Jinx died. The last thing he remembered knowing with absolute certainty was that he couldn’t give up on her— the knowledge he’d done that once and it had fucked everything up even more. The guilt of seeing her dead, tired eyes and knowing, with absolute certainty, they didn’t used to be like that.

Still, he had a country to run— or help run, or rehabilitate, or something like that. He was bigger than himself; he had been since he was ten, and he would be smart not to forget that. Zaun needed him. It needed the Firelights; no matter how lost and aching their leader had become.

He owed it to Zaun, he knew that much. 

He owed it to himself. His younger self, the little, hopeless boy that had fought tooth and nail, scratched and clawed, locking his jaws on every scrap he could grab, desperate for a future. He couldn’t let that boy down; not now, when he was finally there, when he could make sure no other kid turned into him.

Unfortunately, the people around him had different plans.

Apparently, he wasn’t ‘acting like himself’ and he ‘looked like he was about to have a psychotic break’. Vi said she would know. It was almost funny. Or it would’ve been if Ekko wasn’t pretending thinking of Jinx didn’t hurt because Vi was pretending too. 

They were all pretending really— all of Zaun, Sevika, even the Firelights, they remembered the prison break. She’d started a war but she’d been the only one ballsy enough to do something for her country. That’s how Zaunites saw it.  

He knew it wasn’t how Piltovians saw it, but he didn’t care. Sevika’s seat on the council was an olive branch, not an apology. He wouldn’t treat it as such. Hell, he wouldn’t accept their apology until every last one of his people had. That last one had been a big fight with Vi, at first— before she’d left Caitlyn. 

That had somehow been his breaking point, not hers, and it made no sense that he would grieve the end of something he’d despised from the beginning. He’d always been forgiving. Or, at least, he’d always tried to be forgiving. It was the whole point of his Firelights: forgiveness, oasis, new beginnings.

But he’d never forgiven Caitlyn. He didn’t think he ever would.

It kind of sucked, a little bit. Vi said they would’ve gotten along— before everything. Ekko liked to imagine she was right. He would’ve liked that; getting along with his big sister’s girlfriend sounded like a dream. It sounded like the vision he had for his family when he was little, and everyone was still around to tease Vi every time a cute girl walked by her.

In a world where everything was different, Ekko would sit with Vi and Caitlyn by the bar, and discuss politics with his sister and economics with her girlfriend. More importantly, he’d talk about nothing with them; he’d say stupid shit and laugh at how grossly affectionate he found them. He wouldn’t worry about Zaun or responsibility or anything past his big, fat crush on Jinx, and Vi’s shameless teasing.

It was unfair of him, he knew, to grieve a fantasy when there was so much to grieve in his real life. It wasn’t right for him to grieve something that wasn’t even his at all. He had Vi and that should be enough. She should be the one moping and crying about the life she’d lost in the cushy Kiramman mansion with her shiny, topside girlfriend. 

Vi deserved a happy ending.

All she had was him.

And wasn’t that just depressing?

Vi said it wasn’t; that her city was more important to her than anything in the world. She said seeing Vander again screwed her head on straight; losing Jinx was just the final push. Her legacy— laid bare in front of her, raw and noble and entirely Zaunite, she said. It was something she couldn’t betray.

Ekko asked her if it was worth betraying her own heart, that night she stayed at the Firelights base and crawled up against her brother because he was the only one she had left. She’d just smiled sadly and shook her head. It wasn’t an answer; she didn’t give him a yes or a no, just dried tear stains and a wistful look in her eyes.

He wondered if that made him a traitor, then. He still found himself loving Jinx, missing her like he missed his childhood. He wondered if he was betraying his legacy too, in pursuit of his selfish desire; if he was allowed selfishness or if it wasn’t selfish at all— if she’d redeemed herself enough. 

He didn’t ask Vi that. Jinx was an unspoken deity hanging between them. They both liked to think she was watching over them.

But it had been his breaking point, nonetheless. Leading the Firelights was exhausting; helping Vi rebuild the Last Drop and reclaim her rightful place was exhausting; fighting alongside Sevika was exhausting. Somewhere along the line, his dreams had become a heavy burden, debilitating and wearying on his shoulders. It would only be so long before he broke under their weight.

He wasn’t as good at hiding it as he used to be.

Vi was as good at picking up on it as she used to be.

She’d looked at him with big, sad eyes from across the newly reopened bar and told him he needed a break. 

It had been five years since the war, Ekko pointed out, and she hadn’t taken a break. He didn’t understand why it was different. She’d just smiled— her new smile, mournful and wise— and told him those first eight months with Caitlyn had been all the break she needed. He kept his mouth shut after that. 

It was one of the hundreds of nights after that when she finally convinced him to leave.

“Go, Ekko.” She’d shooed. “Get out of here! You’re young, you’re tiny. You shouldn't be holed up leading this place— you’ve got your whole life for that.”

“But you don’t?”

She shook her head, suddenly looking lighter than she had in years. 

“Nah, this was always where I was supposed to end up. You, though? I always thought you and Pow were meant for more.”

“She’s not,” he choked, “she’s not here anymore.”

Vi leaned forward, firmly planting her forearms on the bar. He wondered when she’d managed to grow so adult. If he squinted, he thought she looked just like Vander. She was probably right— this was always the life she was meant for. He wished he could say the same for himself.

“But you are. So get out of here, Little Man, take a break. See the world or something.” She shrugged, pushing herself off to start wiping the bar for the upcoming rush of customers. “I’ll be here when you get back and you can tell me all about it.”

Ekko didn’t have the heart to question her— to ask her if she really would. No amount of growth and no amount of time would ever be enough to ask Vi that question without her flinching back. They both missed Powder, Jinx and whoever she’d become after that in the self-deprecating way Vander had missed Silco. He knew that no matter where he left, she’d be there when he came back.

“But I’ll miss you.” He croaked, feeling every bit like the child all his ghosts loomed over his head. He didn’t want to be away from his sister. He didn’t want to wonder if she was okay; if she’d met someone; if she still loved him like family. He didn’t want to stay in Zaun either.

Vi softened.

“I’ll miss you too, Little Man.”

And just like that— Ekko’s mind was made up. 

He was leaving.  

There was something about Vi, there always had been, that made him feel strong and adventurous and worthy. That was the big thing about her— she always made everyone around her feel like they were worth more. He always thought it was the revolutionary in her, but Vi always laughed and said it was the big sister in her, instead.

Moments like those, more than anything, just made him wish Vi found her own happiness. Out of all of them, she deserved it the most. She always had. Maybe, he thought, he’d find something for her too wherever he went. He wasn’t sure what he could bring back for her, but whatever it was he found, he knew she’d deserve it a hundred times over.

Vi just punched his arm, wiping the big, hot tears rolling down her face when he said that between weeping goodbyes and promises to be back soon. She told him to stay away, anyway, and all he could do was laugh helplessly, knowing there was no way he would.

After that, finding a ship to take him was easy. He was still, at the very least, respected in Zaun, and favors came a long way where he was from. His bag was mostly empty, mainly containing a change of clothes, and a small bag of gold, since he hadn’t bothered asking where the ship was leaving for. Wherever it was, it wasn’t Zaun and it wasn’t Piltover. That was enough.

The Captain was an old man— Undercity old, anyway. He had kind eyes and endless stories about every one of his missing fingers (Ekko learned it was seven); he quickly took a liking to Ekko, and the journey became oddly relaxing in consequence.

For all the ports in Zaun, Ekko had never seen the ocean up close. Not the blue water and clear skies, letting him name and memorize every one of the fish that swam near the surface. It didn’t share its vast expanse or its sparkling seafoam. It was lifeless in comparison. Like everything else back home, the water was stagnant, and as much as he expected to be seasick, he found the swaying waves of the open ocean made him feel like he was being rocked to sleep.

He loved his city more than anything; he wouldn’t trade it for the world. It was vivid and alive and worthy. But it had become small and claustrophobic with time, and the infinity of the silent ocean brought him a great sense of comfort after so many years locked somewhere small and loud. When he leaned on the ship’s railings and felt the salty breeze against his face, he understood why Vi had been so insistent on his departure. He hadn't felt so in place in years.

He wished she was here.

She would’ve loved all the tips and tricks the sailors had to offer. She especially would’ve loved their stories. She’d been like that since she was little— always at Vander’s side, charming the locals with her sharp smile and quick wits. Benzo used to say she was the only kid that could keep the adults on their toes. That hadn't changed, but now, she had stories of her own to tell, and Ekko found that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t tell them for her. He wasn’t as good; he didn’t have the natural ease with which Vi spoke and moved. 

Still, he held his own pretty well. Half the crew had grown up on the streets of the Undercity, earning Ekko their almost instant respect. The other half had learned pretty quickly that he could pull his weight just fine. Soon, his being there felt as natural as breathing, and he seemed like more of an apprentice than a traveler.

The voyage took him across several ports; shipments and errands all over the place, but mainly up north. His favorite stop was Ionia and its gorgeous golden beaches. He almost got down there, ready to stay forever. It was the perfect spot to leave his life behind and pretend he was any other traveler, taking refuge in the harmonious land of blue skies and green forests.

But he promised Vi he’d be back and knew Zaun would always be his anchor, so when the time to leave came, he boarded the ship again and took some shells with him. He used to search for them with Jinx only to come back with sharded glass and eroded rocks. They used to promise their families that one day they’d bring a seashell for each of them.

It was the first time Ekko had seen real shells. He picked up six shells and carefully wrapped each of them with ratty straps of cloth the crew had discarded. He never let them out of his sight once they left Ionia; they were suddenly more precious than his gold.

At night, he cradled them close like they’d somehow magic back people who were long gone. When he couldn’t sleep, he lay in bed and counted them obsessively, tracing his finger over every kink and detail until he was sure he had them memorized.

Red and white, flat; slightly cracked on one of the edges. It was sharper than he expected and it made him bleed the first time he’d poked it curiously. Still, it had soft ridges on the top, and Ekko felt like he could look at the subtle way the curves rose and fell forever.

Two brown shells, perfect mirrors softened by time and waves. Those were convex. It didn’t take him long to realize they were two halves of the same shell, but whatever animal had burrowed inside of them had left or died long ago. He traced them over and over again, and no matter how much he did, they never warmed.

The two biggest shells were grey and white, spiraling and curling into themselves, spiking up on the edges. Ekko picked them up when he saw them crash against the shore, the ways had driven them straight into a rock, yet somehow they didn’t break. The memory always made him smile.

The smallest shell was also curled into itself, but it was perfectly smooth on the outside, shielding its interior with tiny, sharp spikes blocking its entry. There was nothing inside of it, he knew that for sure, but every time he held it, it warmed up instantly. It made him feel less lonely on long nights. His favorite part, though, was its soft, pastel blue, contained by a squiggly golden yellow line. 

He didn’t mention them to anyone.

It was the only place he could bring any real souvenir from. 

While Noxus had been vast and diverse, the distant memories of the war still rested bitterly on his tongue. He considered collecting some of the scrap metal but ended up deciding there wasn’t anything he couldn’t find a better version of in Zaun. Demacia came off as similarly cold and unforgiving and while they grew the most gorgeous flowers he’d seen in his life, he knew they’d wilt so he settled for a little bag of seeds for his Firelights. Freljord was entirely barren but he found he’d enjoyed the locals’ companies the most.

His final destination came almost ten months after leaving; though he didn’t know it would be until the Captain kindly informed him that their next stop was Zaun. He said they’d be staying a long while— trips were a seasonal thing, and a smart sailor knew when gods welcomed him to the seas. They wouldn’t be back for a while.

Immediately, a rush of panic slammed straight into him, leaving him breathless and choking. He wasn’t ready to go back home. He couldn’t do it— he didn’t have it in him. He hadn’t collected enough stories for his sister. He hadn’t found whatever peace he was chasing after. 

He told the Captain he’d stay wherever the last stop was. 

The man winced, looking at Ekko with sympathetic eyes, like he understood the crushing feeling of running away from home, but didn’t fight him. 

The final stop turned out to be Bilgewater. 

Suddenly, he understood the sad look in the Captain’s eyes. Only the desperate were willing to stay on the island. It was the one place they hadn’t stopped but heard countless stories of. It was the worst of Zaun gone international, one of the sailors had snorted. Ekko knew he’d lived there for a while so he must’ve known what he was talking about. Oddly, he felt anything was better than turning back home but he supposed he was desperate too.

All he asked for when he said his goodbyes was a recommendation for a place to spend the night. It was the first favor he’d asked the crew, and they gave it to him for free. The gesture made him soften; he’d miss them. 

They sent him on his way with a map and directions to an inn a few streets down from the port. The owner, they said, was a real hardass but it was the safest place he’d find. It had a strict no-violence policy, and the audacity of the idea itself was almost as impressive as the ability to enforce it. 

“There’s a myth it’s so safe someone saw a kid running around the place.” The Captain laughed cheerily, like it was the most ridiculous notion he’d ever heard. It kind of was, if Ekko was being fair.

One of the older sailors told him they’d be there to take him home in just over half a year if the city didn’t kill him first. Ekko’s smile was genuine when he thanked him.

The inn wasn’t hard to find as much as it was hard to get into. 

It was almost midnight by the time Ekko finally found the place, tucked into a grungy alleyway he’d had to pick more than one fight to get to, and he wasn’t even allowed entry upon arrival. 

The inn’s door was tiny and narrow, with bright, neon lights at the door inviting him in like a moth. The faint sound of laughter and cheers could be heard from outside, but more importantly, Ekko caught the faint smell of food through one of the small, high windows on the cement wall.

Real, actual food— not dehydrated meat and beans with the occasional break of fresh fish and whatever local dish he could afford. This was something that smelled salty and filling and was undoubtedly warm. It would be the first time in weeks he wouldn’t feel the need to numb his tastebuds with cheap rum and, if they’d made any recent stops, stale bread. He was practically salivating at the thought.

Until he knocked on the ratty door and was met with a bouncer he could’ve sworn was bigger than the doorframe.

A bouncer.

At an inn.

Suddenly, Ekko thought hardass was a generous word to describe whatever sadistic owner had put a six-foot Freljordan man bigger than the door to guard the building’s entry. Ekko stared up at him dumbly, shocked by his crossed arms and blocky tattoos. He did not seem impressed by his confusion, looking at him like he was expecting something.

Ekko kept his mouth shut and waited to be told what he wanted— apparently, this place wasn’t very accustomed to newcomers. Momentarily, he considered turning around and finding anywhere to stay, but after midnight, the streets of Bilgewater only got worse, and he wasn’t sure any other place could offer him safety.

“Weapons.” The man snapped gruffly.

“I, uh, don’t have any.” 

The man raised an eyebrow at him, and Ekko started to wonder if he was flexing to intimidate him or if his arms had grown bigger in the past five minutes. And despite having grown up in Zaun, where this kind of encounter was as frequent as the people walking the streets, he couldn’t help but swallow nervously. He wasn't at home turf anymore.

He knew he could hold his own, he was a skilled fighter and a better strategist, but Bilgewater was new and unfamiliar, and the man in front of him looked like he had no problem snapping Ekko’s neck with his bare hands. It wasn’t smart to lie to him, but he wasn’t sure if it would be smarter to give up his pistol or his knife.

“What? You think I’m stupid or something?” He growled, leaning into Ekko’s space with an impatient expression, and while he had the wits to keep his mouth shut, it was clear to him the man was anything but. “You’re not the first idiot to try and cheat the rules. Not the smartest either.”

And objectively, Ekko knew that must’ve been true; there was no way in hell he’d somehow been the first person trying to bypass this man or sneak in weapons. The inn had clearly gained its reputation for a reason, but he was nothing if not stubborn, and he had to, at the very least, put up a fight.

“Do I get them back later?”

The man didn’t answer, just cocked his head and held out his hand and he quickly understood it was either handing them over or getting them stolen on the streets. At least this way he felt like he was giving them up with dignity.

Once the pistol and knife had been ripped out of his hands, the man shoved them into a bag he carried on his waist with a displeased click of his tongue. Ekko was starting to wonder if he was somehow the famous owner and this was all some scheme to cheat people out of their stuff.

“You own this place?” He asked, nodding around as he was led down a slender, dark hallway that looked like it would fall on him at any moment.

“Work here.” He grunted, stopping in front of yet another ridiculously tiny door. 

“So those weapons…?”

The man smirked like this was all a big joke he’d been told a thousand times before. To be fair, it probably was, Ekko hadn’t been doing a good job of being unpredictable. So far, he felt like every word out of his mouth had been said and rebuked a thousand times before.

“Boss says to leave them in the office for safekeeping.”

Ekko eyed him suspiciously, not fully convinced. “And you listen?”

“This place is better than the streets.” He shrugged.

Then, he pushed the door open, shoving Ekko past it and crouching closely behind. And despite the scrappy appearance of the door and the decrepit state of the hallway that led him there, Ekko found himself shocked at the pristine, spacious room he’d been forced into. He could practically feel his mouth hanging open as he took in the diverse, dirty patrons sitting on a seemingly infinite amount of chairs with a dizzying amount of food and drinks on their plates.

Suddenly, he wasn’t even sure he could afford a single night in this place.

“You’re gonna catch flies.” The man snorted, walking him toward the bar at the far end of the diner. “The rooms ain’t this fancy.”

“How much even is this place?” He frowned, instinctively reaching for the small bag of gold he carried in his pocket. However much it was, he knew it was nowhere near as much as he needed.

“You can pay in cash or favors.” Then, turning to Ekko, he smirked, wide and malicious. “From the looks of ya, it’s gonna be favors.”

He didn’t have it in him to deny the obvious reality of his statement.

Still, he was suddenly extremely on edge at the thought of even spending a night there— favors in places like Bilgewater could only mean trouble, and he didn’t need that catching up to him. But he was already in and he didn’t think he’d fare better anywhere outside this place, anyway. No amount of fighting skills would be able to keep him alive if he had no place to sleep.

“Can these terms be negotiated?” He snarled.

“Sure,” he smiled sardonically, “but the boss is a real bitch.”

So far his options were looking like bad and worse, so he sighed and resigned himself to whatever kind of fucking torture negotiating his stay would be. 

“Can we go now ?”

The man laughed derisively. “That confident, huh?”

More like that desperate.

Ekko just nodded, letting him lead the way, and wondering if there was anything on him that could be used as a weapon. He’d take anything; Zaun had taught him to be quick and resourceful, but he hadn’t exactly learned much about negotiating for his stay. That wasn’t how the Firelights were run, and it wasn’t Vi’s policy back at the Last Drop.

For all his gripes and tragedy, Ekko realized he’d only ever been welcomed in.

It made him miss his family tenfold.

It was almost a good thing, it only brought a desperation so strong it made him willing to do anything, say anything, as long as he could sail home to his sister by the end of his trip. He couldn’t leave her alone, not truly. Not after she’d fought tooth and nail for her freedom and carved out a space for him with her own bloody flesh and knife.

If it came down to it, he was strong enough to swing whatever was closest to him.

This door, he noticed upon arrival, was tall and sturdy, nothing like the dingy wood that he’d been greeted with prior. He thought it was fitting, in a cruel, sardonic kind of way, that they’d make everyone who came into this place force themselves into something smaller, while they sat behind something solid and dignified. Once again, he found hardass to be an understatement.

“Come on,” the Fleljorand grunted, “knock.”

And because Ekko wasn’t in the business of pissing off men who looked like beasts or men who looked like beasts’ bosses, he knocked.

The wooden door was so hard and thick that his knuckles ached with what he was sure was a puny knock. He was almost scared that it had been so soft it hadn’t been heard at all but suddenly, a booming voice called back to them, asking what the hell they wanted. He winced at the angry tone; this was the last thing he’d wanted.

“Some guy wants to negotiate terms of stay.” The man next to him called back looking bored. Ekko wondered if this was a regular routine for him. He didn’t seem to be even a little phased by it all. He wasn’t sure if the thought made him feel better or worse.

An annoyed sigh. “Come in.”

Suddenly, Ekko felt himself clam up, not feeling at all ready to walk to the other side of the door. He didn’t understand what the hell was wrong with him— he wasn’t like this. His own fear only served to piss him off, and finally, he turned to the man beside him and gestured for him to open the door, assuming they’d be on their ass about that too otherwise.

The man smiled slightly, almost approvingly, and pushed the door open with ease. 

“Maybe you’re smarter than I thought.” He snorted, revealing a surprisingly small and ordinary office save for what he was sure could only be mold growing on the decaying wooden planks that made up the floor and walls, and dull chalk dust in the corner of the room.

“Leave.” Someone grunted, and the man just nodded and closed the door behind him.

Suddenly, Ekko felt like a caged animal. 

There was a person lying on the chair in the center of the office; their feet were kicked onto the table and their head was leaning back. He couldn’t distinguish their features, covered by a black cape and thick, black boots. Somehow, they managed to come off menacing, regardless. This, he supposed, was the owner.

“Come on, negotiate.” They snapped shortly, not even bothering to look at him. 

All at once, Ekko felt all the air be sucked out of his lungs.

It was a woman.

That was a woman’s voice.

He recognized the woman’s voice.

He felt like he was seeing ghosts all over again. 

It used to happen right after she died. He’d see flashes of her blue hair walking the streets of Zaun, her silhouette would walk right past him, and he’d find himself chasing down a mirage mindlessly down the streets for hours. Even when it had finally calmed down, he felt like he could hear her voice laughing, calling for him, telling him he was silly for missing her as much as he did. 

But this was a woman’s voice.

He couldn’t help himself.

“Are you from Zaun?”

“Excuse me?” She growled, knocking her feet off the table and the hood off her head all at once. He could recognize those long, slender fingers and the shiny, mismatched nail polish anywhere.

She was finally looking at him.

The woman’s anger left her all at once— slumped shoulders and wide eyes.

“Ekko?”

He seized the moment to take her in. This wasn’t a ghost. His memory didn’t line up with her; not like this, not grown up and mature and more beautiful than he’d ever seen her. His memory was gray and flighty, and he could never quite get it right. It was always shifting and blurring.

She was solid.

The first thing he took note of was how pale she still was. The realization made him smile with the assurance that some things never did change.  

That, however, was where the similarities ended.

There were no sickly overtones or ashy grey lines of someone looking more dead than alive anymore but the cold, rosy undertone of her younger days. Now, he could see light, tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose— the kind that he only noticed because he’d studied every one of her features to death— telling stories of sunny days and better times. Even her eyebags, once dark and harsh, had lightened into sleepless nights well-spent.

He noticed her hair too. It was impossible not to— he used to help her braid it back when they were little and wonder who did it for her after she let it grow while they were apart. Now, she let her hair fall straight down to the middle of her back, thick and shiny, like she wanted to show it off.  

She’d gotten broader too, ever-so-slightly. He noticed it in her face most of all; her cheeks were plumper and her cheekbones softer. He couldn’t help but notice the small, permanent turn of her lips— like she was always about to smile. That was new too.

He almost questioned if it was really her; if he was confusing some poor woman running an inn with the girl he’d been seeing in everyone he’d come across for the past five years—almost six now. But then she tilted her head ever so slightly, and he thought her big doe eyes and the sharp slope of her nose were unmistakable. She still hadn’t changed her bangs.

Her clothes had changed least of all, and he clung to that fact like a drowning man. It made him feel like he somehow still knew her if she wore the same tight crop tops and thick boots, despite the draping black fabric she’d thrown on top of herself.

He didn’t realize how long he’d been staring, how hard he’d been trying to commit this new version of her to memory until she snapped her shaking fingers in front of him, loud and insistent.

“Ekko!”

She sounded a bit hysterical.

The thought made him laugh.

And just like that, frantic giggles were bubbling out of him, high and elated in a crescendo of laughter until he was doubled over, clutching his stomach in a weird mixture of overwhelming relief and childhood amusement.

His best friend. She was alive. She was alive and she was talking to him and she was right there .

She was right there.

The realization fully sank in and he impulsively leaped across the small room, slamming into her and sending them both banging and howling onto the floor. He was pretty sure he’d managed to hit his head, hip, and leg all at once in just his effort to get over the desk but she was solid and warm in his arms so it was a thousand times worth it.

“Fucking ouch .” She whined though Ekko could feel her hugging him back just as tightly. “You here to kill me, boy savior?”

Her voice, though it had lightened and mellowed out, was unmistakable in his ear. It was really, undeniably her. He didn’t bother stopping the tears when they finally came.

“Don’t say that,” he mumbled, burying his head against her shoulder.

And though they hadn’t seen each other in years and hadn’t been friends in twice as long, she was undeniably a sympathy crier when she was little. If Ekko cried, his best friend would start sniffling not long after, and soon, it would be waterworks with the both of them.

“Stop crying,” Jinx croaked, though Ekko could already feel the small, tell-tale gasps shaking her chest.

“I thought you were dead.” He choked, feeling the misery of those words suffocate him, even now, holding her between his arms.

Whatever wall she was still holding up broke instantly and she let herself fully slump against the floor, holding onto Ekko like a lifeline.

“I missed you.” She wailed.

They didn’t move for a full ten minutes after that, lying on the floor and crying like they were children again. Ekko didn’t even have it in him to ask her any questions, too afraid that if he looked too close, he’d reveal this to be some kind of sick dream that would fall under further examination.

“Aren’t you mad?” Jinx sniffed, finally having calmed down enough to talk to him. 

Ekko just shook his head, holding onto her tighter. He didn’t think he even had it in himself to be mad at her anymore. All he wanted was to have her back. He’d already lost her too many times to care how it was that happened.

“I’m sorry.” Jinx whimpered, sounding so guilty that whatever spark of anger could possibly be left in him was squashed down almost immediately.

“Just promise you won’t disappear again.” 

He knew that it wasn’t something you could ask Jinx. It was like asking a wild animal to stay put, to stay behind you and keep you company. It wasn’t something that had gone over well for him even once.

But this one time he found himself so desperate, wanting it so bad, that he couldn’t help it and the words slipped out before he even thought them through.

“I, I promise.” She stuttered out, and even though she sounded unsure, it was good enough for Ekko. Whatever it was they had to talk about they’d sort out later. All that mattered now was that she was alive and he was hugging her and she promised.  

It didn’t matter how much her word was worth— she’d promised and that was enough.

Suddenly, many impatient raps were coming from behind one of the walls. 

“One sec!” Jinx called, still not letting go of him.

Finally, out of his stupor, Ekko begrudgingly pulled himself off her, pushing the chair fully away so he could settle semi-comfortably on the floor. As soon as Jinx did the same, he took her hand and laced their fingers together. She just smiled.

“So,” he rasped out, “can I negotiate my way into a room?”

Jinx shook her head and burst into airy little giggles; a new, innocent laugh he’d never heard from her before. It sounded like the little wind chimes Vi had put up on the Last Drop’s door after opening. She said Powder always asked Vander if they could do it, saying it didn’t matter they were running a bar.

“You’ll just stay with us.”

“What?” He frowned. “With you and the Freljordan?” 

“Who, Willy?” Jinx snorted, resting her head against Ekko’s shoulder. “He lives a few blocks away.”

“That guy’s name is Willy?” He asked incredulously.

“I mean it’s Wybjorn but you know,” she shrugged, “potato, tomato.”

The stupid expression instantly made his chest swell with fondness. It felt like they were falling into their old rhythm; like no time had passed. They were still Ekko and Powder— Ekko and Jinx, he didn’t care anymore— after everything. 

“That’s not how the saying goes, Jinx.” He snorted.

“Like I said, potato, tomato.” She whined. “Who cares?”

“Wybjorn probably cares.”

“Nah, he’s a big softie,” she giggled, “kinda reminds me of Vander. You know— big and buff and scary but all sweet on the inside.”

Ekko had a hard time believing that, but he supposed she knew him better than he did and nodded, just happy to hear her voice again after so long. 

“That how you got him to work for you? Appealing to his soft side?”

“No,” she hummed, nuzzling happily into him, “saved his life. You know how it goes— Bilgewater, mobsters, Freljordans escaping the imminent war, you piss off the wrong people, and oops! You’re dead.”

“I take it you stepped in, then?”

“Damn thugs had messed with us prior.” She nodded, clicking her tongue. “Didn’t find it so funny when the girl that talks with guns stepped in. Anyway, Willy and I struck up a friendship after that.”

“Aren’t you his boss?” He snorted.

Jinx craned her neck back, looking up at him in amusement. “That what he told you?”

“Yeah, everyone thinks you run this place.”

She shook her head. “That’s just because I’m better at paperwork. I ended up picking up a couple of things with Silco.”

“So you do run the place.”

Jinx just giggled happily, making his heart flutter with old feelings he thought he’d managed to bury but old habits die hard and Ekko had always been weak for her. 

Benzo once told him that distance made the heart grow fonder when Powder had been sick with chickenpox and unable to go out and play for over a week. Back then, Ekko had frowned and said his heart was plenty fond already but now, he thought he understood what he meant.

Whoever was knocking before, someone who Ekko had forgotten about entirely, seemed to grow impatient, banging on the side of the office like their life depended on it. Jinx seemed to find this hilarious, smiling fondly at the direction of the sound and wiggling out of Ekko’s lap.

“Come on, boy savior,” Jinx stretched, pulling herself up, “time to get ya settled.”

Ekko just nodded, thinking he’d follow Jinx to the Shadow Isles and back if she were to ask. A part of him hoped she did; he didn’t think he had the courage to ask her to go home with him but she’d always been bold.

He followed to the side of the office the sound was coming from, finding a little door built into the side of the room. This one had been painted over; a disgusting shade of white that clearly meant to match it to the walls, barely noticeable at first sight. Jinx opened it to reveal a narrow, spiraling set of stairs and he wondered how the hell she’d gotten her hands on a building this big.

“You know, I thought you’d be in Zaun.” Jinx hummed, pressing one of her hands to the wall.

“Guess I needed a break.” He sighed, carefully watching his every step in fear he’d somehow trip and fall on his face. The stairs creaked with every one of his steps and at some point, he started to consider they’d sink under him and that would be how he fell.

“You guess?” She huffed disbelievingly, making Ekko wonder how it was she still knew every one of his tells.

“Okay, I was forced to take a break.” He didn’t think mentioning Vi was the right move. Not yet, anyway. He wanted to keep the peace for at least one night; he was supposed to be enjoying himself or something.

“Yeah, that sounds more like you.” She giggled, finally reaching the end of the stairs and leading him into a cozy little apartment.

The room they’d both walked into seemed like the living room. It had a light pink couch with a worn-out striped blanket; a small dining table and three mismatched chairs, all carved out in different woods but brought together by the matching doodles littering all of them; and, most notably, a bright purple chest screwed together in the center of the room.

From there, he saw the gateway to a tiny kitchen with a pile of stained glass plates at the far end of the room and three locked doors lined up in the wall right behind the couch. The doors had similarly been painted and doodled over to the point they looked like three giant coloring books. The kitchen didn’t have a door at all, but he could see brightly colored lines scratched onto its doorframe.

Ekko found it all extremely charming and doubly as saddening knowing this was all proof of a life well-lived without him. She’d built something new, just like he’d told her, but he’d left him behind in the process and he couldn’t pretend it didn’t sting.

“Welcome to my humble abode.” She announced, plopping down onto one of the chairs to study his reaction.”

“It’s nice, Jinx.” He smiled, trying to quell the crushing feeling in his chest and, by the look on her face, knowing he’d failed miserably.

“It is. There’s only two bedrooms, though, so I hope ya don’t mind sharing a room with me. We don’t have much space.”

Ekko found himself in such a rush to agree, to be close to her, that he almost forgot to ask who occupied the room next to theirs. But before his brain could even catch up, he found himself rejoicing at the idea of her offering him closeness so readily and a new person rushed into the room, racing straight to Jinx who opened her arms readily. 

“This,” she smiled, “is Isha. Usually, I’d give you the room and sleep with her but she’s just hit thirteen so she’s going through a phase.”

Isha did not seem impressed by Jinx’s teasing, crossing her arms and huffing at her with an annoyed glare that just made her laugh fondly. Isha just turned to Ekko with a polite nod and retreated to her room proudly.

“See? Rebellious phase.” Jinx snorted.  

Ekko didn’t really know what to say or how to react, just staring at her, completely dumbfounded. She seemed so much softer with Isha; tender and fond in a way he hadn’t seen her with anyone else. It felt like watching a whole new side of her unfold and suddenly, the little apartment painted a picture of a domestic life with a makeshift family.

It made his heart grow three times his size; lovestruck.

Jinx was looking up at him expectantly, a strange mix of anxiety and protectiveness swirling in her pink eyes, making Ekko realize she was waiting for his answer, his reaction. And while Ekko only knew vague stories and off-handed mentions of Isha, he couldn’t help but think she was the most perfect child in the world, already.

“She seemed sweet.”

“Nah,” Jinx snorted, sagging in relief, “she seemed like a little brat but you get points for trying!”

Ekko just snickered lightly, feeling strangely at peace in this new domestic setting he’d fallen into; one he knew he didn’t belong in but pretended he did, anyway. It was the kind of life he’d always dreamed of— something of fairytales. He didn’t say any of it aloud, knowing it was unfair to put that all on Jinx but hoping the genuine affection pouring out of him was enough to convey it.

“Come on!” She announced, hopping on her feet with an amused twinkle in her eyes. “Help me make dinner.”

“You cook now?” He laughed incredulously, trailing behind her into the little kitchen and basking in the way her own giggles melted into his.

Chapter Text

ii.

Eating dinner with a dead girl was better than Ekko ever imagined. Not even in his wildest dreams or greatest fantasies could he have imagined Jinx sitting in front of him with her blue hair swept to the side and an unmistakably calm smile on her face. 

He’d pictured her with him a thousand times before— coming back to Zaun, leading the Firelights with him, wrecking Piltover even more, going back into hiding, living with Vi full-time; everything. He’d recalled Jinx, as she used to be, and Jinx as he met her in the battle against Noxus. He’d imagined Powder as the impatient little girl he always stuck to, and Powder as he met her in an alternate universe.

But this was Jinx, not Powder, not the ghost his mind had made up to haunt him, but the woman she’d grown up to be and Ekko couldn’t stop staring. She was better than every one of his daydreams put together— he couldn’t have envisioned her to be so perfect if he tried. 

The charm didn’t wear off even several days into their reunion; no matter how much he stared, touched, or reached, he’d never get used to her.

“Hey, space boy.” Jinx laughed, snapping her fingers in front of his eyes. “I’m not talking to myself over here; what is up with you?”

The words just made him smile, remembering another girl he’d met— one just like her. 

Except Jinx was a thousand times better and Ekko felt like the luckiest man alive. 

He wondered if it was wrong to, if he was betraying himself, his people, for a girl he barely knew anymore. She’d done terrible things, been a horrible person, and he wondered if he even had the right to forgive her at all— much less love her the way he did.

But looking across the table, he saw Jinx serving Isha, he saw Jinx serving him, and he saw Jinx serving herself. 

It was impossible not to notice that he and Isha had more food than she did. She didn’t even mention it, acting like it was routine. 

Isha was smiling up at her like she’d put the moon in the sky, and Ekko couldn’t help but decide he didn’t care because he was pretty sure that was how she looked at her too.

She’d built something new, something not for herself but for her little girl. This was Jinx, but not the Jinx he remembered, and after a lifetime of seeing ghosts, he wanted to build something new too. Jinx might’ve found something worth building it for but Ekko had her from the start. 

Redemption had stopped being real in Zaun a long time ago. If his people could forgive her, revere her, he was allowed to love her. Vi always told him he should be more selfish, and, for once, he wanted to listen. He was tired of running away from ghosts that had been exorcised long ago.

“Ekko.” Jinx giggled insistently, making Ekko wonder how she was so calm, how she possibly could’ve grown so much without him. 

He turned to the little girl sitting beside them. It had been almost a week in Bilgewater. A week of living alongside Isha and Jinx and falling in love a thousand times over with two girls he’d never met but had always loved. She knew it was her— it was Isha that had made Jinx into this careful, loving thing. And Ekko understood; he thought he’d do anything for her from the first time he’d heard Vi say her name.

He hadn’t asked, though. He still hadn’t dared question Jinx on why they were alive at all. He was starting to get scared that he would and he’d be met with the reality of it all being some kind of mirage— a dream he refused to wake up from. 

He wondered what she’d say if she knew he dreamed about her. She’d probably laugh.

Ekko shook his head, trying to focus on whatever it was Jinx was saying.

She was smiling. She was smiling a lot lately. “You okay?” 

He couldn’t help himself.

“Yeah, I, uh, didn’t Isha die?”

Jinx froze, blinking. The smile slipped off her face. Even Isha, who’d previously been shoveling stew in her mouth like they’d somehow take it away from her, stopped eating. Ekko wished he had the ability to keep his fucking mouth shut.

No one spoke. The words rang in his ears deafeningly.

He was sure he was going to get kicked out. He was going to lose her again; it would be his fault again. He could already hear her voice kicking her out. Suddenly, he wished this all was some stupid dream and he hadn’t somehow managed to screw up his second chance.

Isha was the first to move, dropping her spoon with a loud, clamoring splash.

Ekko flinched.

She started giggling, bringing her hand to her mouth and gripping the table, like she couldn’t contain herself. Soon, she was clutching her stomach with her other hand, laughing wildly with her eyes closed and braids falling forward.

“Fuck.” Jinx swore, bringing her hand down to the table. Loudly. 

The gesture just made Isha laugh harder, and Ekko instinctively brought his hand forward to avoid her braids falling into the stew; she’d washed it just that morning. He still didn’t move otherwise.

“Dammit, Ekko,” Jinx whined softly, confusing him to no end. She sounded so light, so unlike the cold expression he’d expected. It made his head spin.

He wondered if she knew his heart was beating a mile a minute— that he was still terrified she’d make him leave, that he’d be ripped away from everything he ever wanted a second time. He didn’t think he could survive it this time.

“What?”

“We had a bet. ” Jinx pouted, sticking her tongue out at Isha, who was practically glowing in delight.

“A bet?!”

He didn’t know why he was surprised; at the end of the day, Jinx would always be Jinx.

“Yeah, and I lost.” Jinx screeched, throwing herself forward just as Ekko grabbed the pot and Isha moved. It was nice to think he still knew her— that he still fit in her life so seamlessly. It was a foreign kind of reassurance he could never ask for aloud.

“What did you even lose?” Ekko asked curiously.

“My pride. ” She exclaimed dramatically, at the same time Isha signed “Jinx has to redo my hair.”

“Wasn’t she gonna do that, anyway?”

“ No, ” she grumbled. “ I think it’s dumb. But I guess she won, and a deal’s a deal. So now I have to. Or whatever.”

Ekko raised an eyebrow incredulously, turning to Isha.

“She feels better saying it’s a bet.” She signed, eyes twinkling with amusement.

“Yeah,” he laughed, “that sounds like her. When we were kids she used to lose shooting games on purpose so I could braid her hair.”

“I did no such thing!” Jinx protested, once again bringing her hand down in what must have been some weird new habit she’d developed, maybe to make up for the lack of needless violence. “You won our bets fair and square.”

“You’re literally a better shot than me.”

“Okay, well, I can’t be perfect all the time, Ekko.”

Ekko rolled his eyes, huffing. “Always a dance with you.”

This time, she didn’t argue, just smiled softly like the words were just one big inside joke. It made him flutter with fondness. It was perfect, all of it— from the way her lips curled around the k to the way they curled into a smile. He didn’t think he’d ever hear her say his name again; not like that.

The newfound ease they settled into made him brave enough to ask again.

“So, you gonna answer my question?”

“Oh, you know kids.” Jinx laughed, softly combing her hands through Isha's hair. “The little shits are made of rubber.”

Isha rolled her eyes leaning forward and tapping her head with an annoyed huff.

“Okay, okay, and a little bit of metal.”

Isha huffed again, waving her prosthetic arm.

“A lot of metal.” Jinx amended. “But this way we match!” She smiled, showing off the same golden material on her finger as Isha’s arm.

Ekko couldn't help but laugh— relieved by the knowledge that he hadn't somehow fucked up his second chance forever. It was strange, in a good way, how they managed to make him feel included even when betting on him; like he was a part of the little family they'd built for themselves even if he knew he was irreparably an outsider.

“Anyway, is that what you were thinking so hard about? I was getting worried ! I thought something important had happened.”

“What,” Ekko laughed incredulously, shocked again and again about how little she'd changed where it mattered, “you don’t think dying and coming back to life is important?”

“Oh,” Jinx waved her hand dismissively, “we hardly died. ”

“Hardly?!”

“I mean we didn’t! I crawled through the air vents.” Jinx rushed to assure him. Then, lowering her voice into something soft and solemn. “Isha survived the explosion but they took me away before anyone saw. We just… assumed. But Vander tried to push her away and some Piltovan medic picked her up doing recon. I was, um. I was already gone.”

He couldn't help but soften at the desolate look in her eyes. She looked guilty, even now that Isha was beside her, looking at her with big, sympathetic eyes. 

Ekko understood. He knew a lot about the guilt of thinking someone was dead— about giving up on a living, breathing thing; a ghost of flesh and blood. 

“You're both okay now.” He amended, basking in the way Jinx brightened again, looking like the woman he'd met since arriving.

(He made her look like that. It was him, he still had the ability to— she smiled, she smiled, she smiled.) 

“Yeah! And now that you're here, you can help dye Isha's hair too!”

Ekko was then faced with the predicament of the girl he was in love with and her surrogate sister-slash-daughter staring at him with big puppy eyes and caving immediately. He would've said yes no matter what face they'd made. He'd always say yes to them.

So exactly one month later Ekko was knee-deep on tiles that used to be white bemoaning the loss of his hair— it used to be white too. 

Jinx, apparently, didn't see the point in gloves. She didn't see the point in bleach either— she said Isha's hair was honey-colored , a rich woman passing through her inn had said so! But Jinx said a lot of things— like the blue splattered across her nose was intentional and that Ekko looked good with messy splotches of dye in his locs. 

He just laughed and let her lie. 

Halfway through mixing the dye and getting most of it on their hands instead of the bowl, Isha stopped them, saying she wanted a change. Ekko thought if she no longer wanted blue he'd slobber his stained hands all over her head, anyway. It was too late and Ekko's own hair had already committed. Jinx said it gave him personality but knowing her that probably meant it sucked.

“Short on top and long on the bottom.” Isha signed happily. Ekko thought she either grossly overestimated her sister's skill or Ekko's willingness to stop her from going too far.

Jinx had no such qualms.

“Give me the scissors, wonder boy!” She exclaimed, throwing her hand out to him. 

Warily, Ekko sighed and handed her the kitchen scissors he’d grabbed while Jinx mixed the dye. She snatched them happily, snapping them open and closed with a gleeful playfulness that used to make him scared but now only put him at ease. It had never been so genuine, so calm when it was a bomb in her hand.

“You ready, Bunny?” She asked, turning to Isha, who nodded happily like this was all perfectly normal, routine, for them. He couldn’t imagine years of Jinx’s eyes sparkling with simple adoration and calm delight. It made his head spin and his eyes sting. 

He wanted to ask so badly if he could ever be welcome into the life they’d built.

“Okay, Ekko, I’ll cut the top part and you can cut the bottom part.”

“With what?”

“With the second pair of scissors, silly.” She grinned, though it looked a bit confused, like somehow the notion of her not keeping several pairs of scissors in her tiny bathroom was bizarre.

And so, Ekko grabbed the second pair of scissors, and obediently kneeled on the white tiles, cutting off the ends of Isha's hair, now almost down to her waist, with expert ease. 

He could see both girls were surprised, and he took the opportunity to impress them happily, carefully watching for split ends and cutting soft layers as opposed to the choppy ones Jinx probably did.

“Damn,” Jinx whistled, “you really are good at everything, huh?”

Being a leader had always meant being whatever his people needed from him. He was bigger, more important, than himself. And sometimes, his people needed barbers and cooks and healthy people to watch over the children. 

Sometimes, being a leader was sitting in the dirt with the people he wanted to represent and helping someone with their overgrown bangs and matted scalp, simply because he could.

Ekko just smiled, shrugging bashfully and not telling her the real reason he knew how to do any of this at all.

Now, having shed his role, having left someone else to lead— entrusting Zaun to Vi, and Sevika, and Scar—, he found he enjoyed doing all of it. It made him feel human. He hoped it humanized him to his people too. 

He hoped they knew he'd go back to them, that he'd never meant to abandon them, and he never would. Looking up at Jinx, humming obliviously while snipping half of the length off her shoulders, he wondered what it would mean for them when he finally went home.

Foolishly, he hoped it meant she'd go back with him.

He kept his mouth shut, reminded himself it had barely been over a month, and tried to make sure Isha's hair came out even.

“Okay!” Jinx exclaimed, circling the girl appreciatively. “I think we don't need to cut anymore.”

Ekko nodded, pulling back and watching in amusement as she hovered and chirped around Isha. Somehow, age had grown her out of a lot of things, but the nervous energy trilling under her skin hadn't been one of them.

He was glad for it. Liveliness was never something to be taken for granted where they grew up.

“What do you think, Bunny?” Jinx asked, finally, peering curiously over Isha's shoulder as she looked at herself in the mirror.

Isha nodded, smiling in approval, and Ekko now understood it as the go-ahead to dye her bottom layer. 

Going off the experience so far, he'd say they'd been pretty successful. Isha’s hair was now falling in loose waves down her back, and she kept patting it like she couldn't quite believe it was hers. 

The process had been similarly smooth for Jinx, and really, the biggest inconvenience he expected was sweeping the strands of hair clouding the bathroom floor.

Except the dye got everywhere and Ekko didn’t think his locs would go back to being white in a while, and Jinx was on the floor, clutching her stomach from laughing. 

“How is Mister Perfect so bad at this?” She guffawed, watching Ekko desperately trying to evenly dye the ends of Isha's hair only to get more of it on his own.

“None of the Firelights needed help with their dye job. ” He huffed, trying to rub the goop off his fingers and only succeeding in getting more of it on his palms.

“ Yeah, ” she wrinkled her nose, “I could tell.”

“What's wrong with our hair?!” 

“Nothing,” she shrugged, clearly laughing at him, “it's just boring.”

Ekko laughed incredulously, pressing his hands against his knees to push himself upright and only noticing his mistake when Isha started laughing much more derisively than the situation called for. He didn't move, accepting his fate with the decision that he could at least avoid looking like a buffoon entirely.

“You've gotten meaner.”

“You try living alone with a thirteen-year-old. They're vicious. ”

Immediately, Isha huffed, slapping Jinx's hand away from her bangs with an annoyed glare. Jinx, in turn, poked her in the cheek, causing Isha to stick her tongue out, swirling her neck at breakneck speed, causing her to quickly step back with her hands behind her to avoid falling. 

Ekko mourned the hours he’d lose scrubbing the dye splatters off the walls.

“Aw, I'm just kidding, Bunny, don't be like that.” Jinx grinned, tugging on one of the longer strands of Isha's hair and backing out right before the girl grabbed her bangs in retaliation. Then, turning to Ekko, between crinkling eyes and choked giggles, she mouthed, “See? Vicious.”

Isha huffed, crossing her arms with an annoyed pout.

It made Ekko miss his own sister, and he hoped Vi wouldn't be too mad at him for taking advantage of everything she'd missed. A familiar guilt gnawed at his stomach, and he could feel it chewing away at his bones as it started to run out of the bloody tissue lining his polluted insides. 

He tried to shake the thought away, focusing on the honey-colored locks in front of him— whatever that meant— and reminding himself he’d bring it up. 

Eventually.

Ekko hadn’t indulged once in his life, not before this, and yet, a single month of it had rendered him weak-willed and useless to this new life’s charms. He wasn’t sure how selfish it was to hold onto it for just a bit longer.

“You know she's just like you, right?”

At that, Isha turned, nodding at Jinx seriously. He couldn't deny the softness that overcame him at her agreement— it was nice to know Jinx was loved in their years apart. 

“Hardly.” Jinx snorted, like the notion was ridiculous and everyone knew it. “Kid's a million leagues ahead of me.”

This time, Isha crossed her arms and shook her head petulantly, like the mere thought was insulting. Ekko wondered how many times they'd had this fight before, wondered how many times it reminded her of the same one she used to have with Vi.

He didn't say anything. 

Isha did it before he got the chance. He was almost grateful she didn't give him time to run his mouth again.

“You talk like Vi.”

Ekko wondered how he knew that; if he missed her.

Jinx narrowed her eyes. “Doesn't matter if I do; won't ever see her again to get my ass beat about it, now will I?”

“Because you don't want to.”

She blinked, looking at Isha like she'd slapped her across the face. Ekko ducked his head and tried to hide behind the sound of running water coming out blue under his hands.

“She wouldn't want to see me.”

“Liar.” 

“Okay, fine. Then you know why I don't wanna see her, happy?”

Isha clicked her tongue, and Ekko turned just in time to see her sign the word for selfish . She looked upset but Jinx just looked tired. And sad in a way that Ekko hadn't seen in years. It was the way she'd looked at the fight on the bridge and when he talked her out of blowing herself up a thousand unsuccessful times and one successful one. 

It haunted him in the way only terrifying things you should only ever see once— or never, really— could.

It was chilling. 

Her voice came out cold when she addressed him. “Ekko. Go get started on dinner with Isha. We have to wait for the dye to take, anyway.”

Instantly, the girl seemed to remember herself snapping out of it and looking crestfallen. Ekko recognized the familiar guilt in her eyes like he did his own. She was looking at her sister like she'd gutted her. He wished he had any comfort to offer.

“Sorry.” She signed, and Jinx must've seen the same thing Ekko did because she softened instantly. 

“Hey, kid, I'm not mad.” She smiled, tapping Isha on the nose. The whole thing looked off. “I just need a sec. You know,” she added, sounding strained, “since I got a few screws loose.”

No one laughed.

Ekko sighed, gently tapping Isha between the shoulders and heading out.

Obediently, the girl followed and he was just glad it hadn’t turned into a scene. The last thing he wanted was to be one giant reminder of the life she’d left behind and the family she’d lost with it, even knowing that, objectively, he hadn’t started the argument at all. He couldn’t imagine his presence helped.

Quietly, they both walked into the kitchen, pretending they didn’t hear Jinx’s muttering through the other side of the wall. When he looked over at Isha, the poor girl was wincing and grimacing like she’d been shot. In any other situation, it would’ve been funny to see her so dramatic and similar to her sister, but Ekko found no humor in the current situation. 

“You know,” he sighed, "I wanna bring up Vi too.”

Isha looked up at him with sad eyes. He wondered, for a second, if the sisters could ever really be together. He wasn't sure they could ever really be apart .

“I’m just scared.” He shrugged helplessly. “I don't wanna lose her again.” His voice came out shaky. “But I— I want my family back.” 

At that, Isha suddenly stopped what she was doing, not even bothering to close the drawer she was rummaging through before stepping forward and wrapping her arms around Ekko's middle. He felt like he could cry.

He hugged her back easily, one hand around her shoulders and one on her head, cradling her gently. “You too, huh, kid?”

She nodded, pulling away slightly. Ekko didn't move his hands and Isha didn't ask him to.

“I'd miss Jinx if she wasn't around.” She signed.

“Yeah. Vi does too.” 

She huffed, looking equal parts frustrated and devastated and Ekko pulled her back in, resting her head on top of hers.

“Maybe we could tag-team it.” He chuckled dryly, but judging by how Isha squeezed him tighter, he didn't think either of them took it as a joke.

Suddenly, a soft banging sound came from the bathroom, followed by a loud dammit , much more energetic and Jinx-like, and both of them giggled, taking out the pots and pans they needed to cook dinner before she was done with whatever she was doing.

It didn't take long after that for Jinx to be done, leaving a huge mess behind, Ekko was sure. By then, they already had everything ready, though it wasn't much considering she hadn't told them what it was they were having.

It didn't matter because the jammed bathroom door started wiggling soon after, along with a string of curses and peeved remarks about being allowed to blow shit up. The sound made him relax with the knowledge that, at the end of the day, she was still Jinx, and things were still okay. 

When Jinx finally emerged, it was with a large pink streak on the front of her hair. It looked like Vi's— it looked like Powder's. Ekko wondered why this argument, clearly old and hashed out a thousand times already, had been different. He didn't ask. All of a sudden, felt like there was blood on his hands.

Neither of them mentioned it but he thought it looked as pretty on her as it had Powder. He supposed they were technically the same person, but he knew they weren't, looking at her hair like this, long and slightly wavy, down past her shoulders. 

This girl was uniquely different and she was uniquely his .

He’d never been possessive, not really. Not when he grew up in a place where nothing was truly his and everything was shared and passed around a thousand times before he got his turn. Not when even before that he’d shared a cramped bed with Powder half nights and Vi when he was too scared to fall asleep alone. Not when he’d built a community that shared everything but their pasts. 

But looking at her now— Ekko couldn’t help but feel that she was his and he was hers. And it wasn’t official, not really, not now and maybe not ever but sometimes she gave him these looks . 

Sometimes, despite her owning a perfectly good sofa, he curled up against her in the twin bed they shared. She’d hold him almost involuntarily, and they felt like lovers. Sometimes, Isha would push herself between them and lean against Ekko’s side as Jinx wrapped her arm around both of them. It felt like they were more than friends.

But they weren’t lovers, and Jinx had never said she was his. She’d never said anything at all; it was only the looks and the soft way she held him when they both pretended they didn’t have a past or a reputation.

He turned to her, knowing this fragile game of domestic pretend between them was enough. “What are we making, boss?”

“Just follow my lead,” Jinx laughed, “I don’t trust whatever survivalist food you lived off of. Or!” She added consideringly, “or follow Isha’s lead. Knives are her thing; I’m the explosives sister.”

“Wow,” he laughed, pushing his hands under the running sink water and methodically cleaning them the way he'd learned when in charge of communal cooking, “Vi would have a stroke hearing that.”

His mind caught up to his mouth about four seconds too late, only leaving the tail end of his words and silence so deafening it felt louder than the streets he'd grown up in. Isha shot him a look that very clearly said this isn't what I meant when I accepted teaming up. Ekko couldn’t believe he was getting stared down by a thirteen-year-old.

Fuck, he didn't even give Jinx time to get over the last comment about her sister.

Everything froze. Ekko felt his heart stop when Isha dropped her knife; it looked involuntary. 

The sound, like little Isha had been, was a catalyst. Ekko felt like time started moving again; Isha picked up her knife, and Jinx went back to rummaging through her fridge. 

“Yeah,” she said, “she would.”

Ekko felt his heart breaking. He didn’t have the courage to push. He didn’t know how to ask someone he’d just met to be his family again. He didn’t know how to tell someone in mourning that their dead were still waiting for them.

“So,” he sighed, turning to Isha, “can I trust you won’t cut my finger off?”

The girl grinned sharply up at him and, while it had originally been a joke, he suddenly got scared she actually would cut his finger.

“If she did cut your finger off, I could totally build you another one.” 

Isha giggled, wiggling her mechanic hand, and effectively reminding Ekko that Jinx had raised her.

“Don't enable her,” he muttered, unsure of who he was talking to at that point. 

Both of them cackled out identical laughs. 

“Can't believe they let you raise a child…” He laughed, shaking his head and carefully trying to copy the way Isha was chopping some green vegetables in front of them. 

“Oh, they hardly let me ,” Jinx cackled, getting out some type of pink fish and pulling out the bones with impressive dexterity. “Sevika was like… having war flashbacks. All like not again, and everyone gets a brat and gives up on the country and legalize infanticide. ”

Isha huffed, staring her down with an unimpressed expression.

“Okay fine , Sevika didn't say that last thing. She like— loved the kid. Or whatever.” Ekko couldn't help but laugh at how easily Jinx gave in to Isha.

“Didn't peg Sevika for the child-friendly type.”

Still, Ekko wasn’t quite as surprised as he should’ve been; something about Isha that made her easy to love.

“Not at all,” she giggled, “she used to get in fights with me all the time. Me! I was twelve!” 

“Hm,” Ekko hummed, turning around to look at her, “I bet you played dirty.”

“Of course!” Jinx responded gleefully, taking a large stride across the kitchen until she was only inches apart from Ekko. She was grinning, big and toothy, and right in his face. “I used my chompers.”

“Yeah,” he smiled, looking down at her lips, knife, and vegetables now wholly forgotten, “that sounds like you.”

Jinx got on her tiptoes, now at eye level. “Does it?”

Her bright pink eyes were right in front of him, so close he could see every kink and spark of her iris. So close she could see the swoop of her lashes as she looked down at his lips. So close he felt like there was nowhere he could look where he wouldn't see them. He didn't try; he felt like he'd explode.

Suddenly, Isha clicked her tongue and Jinx fell back on her heels, looking away. She was pointing at the pan with an unimpressed expression, where the oil was already golden and simmering, looking like it was about to burn.

Jinx huffed, walking over to the pot and Ekko was left, again, squirming under a thirteen-year-old’s glare. 

“Really?” She signed, wrinkling her nose. “You’re not my age.”

Ekko couldn’t believe what his life had come to as he glared at her right back. He could practically hear Vi’s voice in his ear: beefing with a child? Seriously?

He stuck his tongue at her, and Isha just rolled her eyes. Then, she walked over to the pot with the cut-up vegetables ignoring him completely. He was starting to understand what Jinx meant when she said living with a teenager was vicious. He didn’t remember the Firelight kids being this sassy but he supposed Jinx hadn’t raised them.

“Ekko. Time to wash out Isha's hair.” Jinx declared firmly. “Off you go, boy wonder, I'm busy over here.”

He pulled a face. “But she’ll cut my finger off or something.”

At that, both girls gave him matching unimpressed looks. 

Ekko turned to the bathroom.

Isha smiled angelically when she arrived, and for all their banter, Ekko still thought she was the most perfect kid in the world.

“Alright,” he grinned, gently guiding her head into the sink, “we're going this Zaun style: shittily and considering the mess tomorrow's problem.” He paused consideringly. “Or Jinx's problem.”

Isha's shoulders shook with silent laughter, but she didn't move apart from the brief, excited shuffling. Maybe Jinx was starting to rub off on him too. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Soon, Isha was shoving her head out of the sink, shaking her head, and splashing water everywhere, and Ekko thought Jinx was definitely rubbing off on him because his first instinct was to shove a towel over her head and dry it wildly. Isha yelped, laughing and swatting his hands away, quickly grabbing the longer tips of her hair and sprinkling him with the still-blue water.

“Hey!” He laughed, stepping back and rubbing the water off his face.

Unfortunately, maybe he'd have to reassess Jinx rubbing off on him because she never would have made the dire mistake of letting her guard down the way he had. 

Instantly, Isha saw the opening for what it was and threw the wet towel over his head .

“You're just like your sister.” He sighed, pulling it off only to see Isha pointing at his own hair with a mischievous grin.

He narrowed his eyes. “You are not rinsing my hair.”

So, of course, Isha rinsed his hair and he complained and told her she was making a mess the whole time. Unfortunately, she was stubborn and Ekko was laughing so he stood and waited until the teenager who now bullied him around decided she was done.

“Why are you two like this?” He glared, feeling his wet hair stick to his face and drip down on his shoulders and neck.

Isha grinned innocently, handing him a fresh towel. 

He recognized it for the peace offering it was and huffed, rubbing the water out of his hair and gently patting down Isha's own curls after he was done. The girl giggled, leaning into the touch contently.

“Sorry for the Vi blunder before.” He sighed, grabbing a comb and deciding to brush through it while they were at it. 

Isha shrugged, waving her hand dismissively, I fucked up too.

“I didn't mean to set her off, but maybe the pink streak is a good sign.”

She nodded excitedly, trying to turn to him, clearly to sign something, only to pull the brush down on a particularly pesky knot and yelp. 

She tapped his hand slightly, and Ekko didn't have to see her face to know she was glaring. 

“You were the one that moved!” He laughed incredulously.

Isha crossed her arms with a huff but didn't move away.

“You're so bad at this.” She signed, lifting her hands slightly over her head.

Ekko, practically born with Jinx's laugh against his ear, took it as the go-ahead it was and kept brushing. He tried to go slightly slower, letting it hover slightly in between strands, just in case she tried to move again.

“You don't even know how to braid your own hair.” He retorted and went on to braid it for her.

Isha, of course, was just like the woman who'd raised her and jabbed and snorted the whole time but instantly hugged him when she saw the reflection in the mirror after he was done.

“I'm glad you like it, kid.”

Later, Jinx was quick to point the braids out, grinning at him like this was all some huge ploy he'd fallen into. With her, he’d believe it somehow was; he wouldn’t mind it if it was.

“You did Isha's hair.” She stated gleefully, taking her seat on the chair across from him.

“Was I not supposed to?”

“No,” she shrugged, still looking far too amused for his liking, “you've gone soft, is all. Almost like you wanna stay with us.”

Ekko blinked. 

Wasn't it obvious?

Sensing his confusion, Isha just sighed, getting up and grabbing the pot and crooked ladle to serve them, probably before he could run his mouth. He was glad for her interruption, he didn't think he was ready to tell her that's exactly what he wanted. Not yet.

Jinx grinned, easily distracted by the change of pace. “Thanks, Bunny.”

Isha nodded, sitting back down and eating her serving so avidly Ekko almost forgot she hadn't been raised by Vi too. He noticed she had the same silly habit her sister did and served them both extra. 

“You're such a slob” Jinx teased, proceeding to eat with barely more grace than she did.

Ekko laughed, carefully stirring the white soup on his own plate and wondering if it would be any good— he'd only ever liked a handful of recipes for them. Isha was chowing down on it so fast he was scared he'd choke but she'd seen Vi eat much worse in less time so he wasn't particularly reassured.

Still, it was Jinx's cooking and she was surprisingly competent at it. It wasn't like a fissures’ kid would ever deny food, anyway. 

Carefully, he took a spoonful, blowing on it and taking in the rich, creamy look and texture of it as he unceremoniously shoved it into his mouth.

Suddenly, he was slammed by an utter, unmistakable feeling of homesickness so big he didn't know what to do with it— there was nowhere else to hide it; it was clear on his face when he looked up at Jinx.

“This tastes like Jericho’s.”

“Oh, you know,” she shrugged, “you take the  jinx out of the city, not the city out of Jinx.”

He shook his head fondly, “I don't think that's how the saying goes.”

She huffed, waving her hand dismissively. “Potato, tomato. It's all the same.”

“That's not even a real expression!” He laughed, reveling in the taste of home and the feeling of Jinx sitting across from him.

The thought, somehow, seemed to make him realize that she was truly right there , within reach in a way she hadn't been in years, and there was no reason to shy away from her anymore. 

He hooked his leg around hers, pressing their ankles together and beaming when she tilted her head at him. He didn't really have an explanation to offer past the fact that he missed Vi and he missed playing footsie with Jinx under the table while the older girl tried to get them to eat anything other than Jericho's.

“You just lack creativity.” Jinx pouted, pressing her leg closer against his. 

“I'd say Isha's haircut is pretty creative.” He cut back, laughing at the betrayed look the girl, now on her second bowl of soup, sent her.

“Doesn't count if it's all her!” Jinx retorted, unable to keep the giggles out of her voice.

“Hardly.” He gestured up at his locs, shaking his head and bemoaning the white color that would take weeks to come back. “Are you seeing this shit?”

She shrugged, fond and light. “Okay so this way we match; the whole family.”

And while the last part came out kind of bitter, stunted, and short around the edges with the absence of Vi's voice, Jinx still sounded like she actually believed it— like she saw him as he did her. 

The notion was equal parts impossible and dizzying. It made Ekko wonder if she saw him under the soft light he did her. If he was also slightly golden around the edges and swirling around in big, cheesy hearts of childhood, and fondness, and joy .

He didn't ask what she meant by that, and though dinner continued normally he could see the way Isha shook her head and Jinx's eyes were just slightly brighter than normal. 

He considered, for once, that she didn't think she could ask either; that they were both too scared to step out into this clumsy dance of intimacy and simplicity, and something more they'd never defined.

They were lying in bed at the end of the day when one of them mustered up the courage— it wasn't Ekko. 

Jinx looked at him through half-lidded violet eyes, shifting and swirling with something so gentle that he was sure he was imagining it. He wasn't sure he'd ever been looked at like that: like she treasured him.

They were both on their sides, Jinx's hair falling in loose waves around her— a halo. It was fitting, he thought, that she'd looked like an angel, even after everything that happened between them; he didn't quite understand how he ever saw her any other way. 

Now, she was treating him with such quiet affection that he felt like he was back with Powder, in a universe that never belonged to him to begin with. 

Except this was his . Entirely meant for him. This girl was his Jinx and this was his world. It felt, a little bit, like a reward— the childish kind Benzo used to give him after helping out at the shop when he was a kid.

It was even better than Powder.

She reached out her hand, letting it hover over his cheek but not touching, never touching, because they didn't do that. He wished she did. 

She raised an eyebrow slightly, rolling her hand, still in the air, and he realized, in a sudden, startling realization that she was asking for permission. 

He swore his heart would pound out of his chest or leap through his throat.

He smiled, barely nodding. She'd become tender in his absence in the same way he'd become raw in hers, but he didn't want to think about that.

He felt the warmth even before she let the hand press against him.

“Hey, Ekko?” 

He hummed, reveling in the sound of her voice. Softness was new to him, something he could never afford himself leading the Firelights. Whatever vulnerability was left in him, he thought he'd buried. 

Clearly, it was not the case, judging by how he was becoming putty under her smile. He wondered if this was how the other Ekko felt, but there was no use mourning a life that was never his to begin with and he let himself be that man, however briefly, now. In her bed, with her hand cupping his cheek, he was reduced to nothing but his raw, beating heart. 

Startlingly, he realized he'd trust her with it.

“There’s a myth that soulmates are tied by a string.”

He wasn’t sure if he trusted himself to speak; it felt like every inch of him was melting. He hummed again.

“It never breaks, you know.” She smiled, though he thought it looked a bit sad. “No matter how far apart they are, it never breaks.”

Ekko’s heart was pounding. He let her go on.

“That’s how they always find each other, even without looking.” She giggled. “They’re tied together.”

“Yeah?” He was sure his voice gave him away, that Jinx recognized every bit of feeling she held for her, every ounce of tenderness, and she was still holding it all, against his cheek, on display; a treasure.

He was probably being delusional.

“Mhm,” she hummed, “some girl from Ionia said so. At the inn.”

He laughed, low and breathless, not quite believing his luck and not quite wanting to assume either. Jinx had always been one for telling stories and, more often than not, she waved everyone off with the excuse that it was fun .

“I don’t think that stuff’s real, Jinx.”

She huffed, rolling her eyes fondly. 

Looking at him like he was stupid, fondly.  

You're an idiot except it's said with the affectionate lilt of I'm so glad to know you , and the kind smile of you make me happy.  

She huffed, rolling her eyes, and the quirk of her lips probably didn't mean anything, but to Ekko it was the world on his shoulders. In a good way, for once.

Then, taking her hand off his, oblivious to how badly Ekko missed the contact, she stretched out to the other side of the bed, reaching for her nightstand. He limited himself to just watching, content with knowing she was here and she was with him and she wasn't running away. 

She palmed the table clumsily, finally grabbing some old yarn she'd never put away because she never, despite how much Isha needled her, put anything away. For once, her tiny apartment looking like an arts and crafts store seemed to come in handy, as she immediately brightened.

She turned back to Ekko with a grin so self-satisfied, that he almost got scared of what she'd do next. On worse days, that grin had only meant one thing, and it was trouble. This time, the fear felt more akin to excitement. 

He wondered if it was a flaw of his, the way he settled so easily into comfort, and trust, with this girl who'd only ever proved herself a friend once and a foe a thousand times over.

But then, she was reaching for his hand, giggling softly, and he found he didn't care. It felt like being children again, huddled in the same bed, giggling and pressing against each other as close as they could lest one of them fall off. Powder used to take his hand back then too, put knick-knacks and surprises in it, and wiggle excitedly when he looked down to check what it was.

Now, it was a bright golden string he remembered buying at the market because it looked like Isha's eyes and she enjoyed braiding it into her hair. There was something tender about having pieces of himself lying around Jinx's house so soon as two months into this visit they'd never really defined.

Haphazardly, with the same half-frantic rush she'd done everything since she was little because her head moved so fast her body couldn't catch up, she wrapped the string around Ekko's pinky. 

He just stared, incredulous and a bit too disbelieving to look back up at her for fear the illusion would somehow shatter; that maybe he’d managed to read it all wrong or hallucinate some insane delusion of a life he’d never get.

He kept staring, mouth firmly clamped shut and, with the same impatient urgency, she tied it on her own hand, wrapping them neatly together in a little bow. 

Then, grabbing the knife beneath her pillow— “You sleep with a knife ?” “what? You think people survive in Bilgewater if they don't? I used to sleep with a gun” — she cut the rest of it clean off.

“There.” She smiled, softly pressing her lips against his. “Now it’s real.”

And Ekko— Ekko should've kissed back. Ekko should've pulled her against him and told her how he felt right then and there. He should've hugged her waist and kissed her neck and tried to tangle his fingers in her hair only to laugh along with her when her hand was pulled up with his. 

Ekko should've done a thousand romantic things. 

A thousand different versions of him did .

This version, however, looked at her like the breath had been knocked out of his lungs. “You think we're soulmates?”

“What, we're together in every universe and you don't wanna be soulmates?”

And again, there were a thousand things he could've said, a thousand speeches other versions of him made, but this version, right there, on Jinx's twin-sized mattress and pink sheets, just laughed. 

“Bilgewater has made you soft.”

He couldn't have sounded more adoring if he tried. Zaunite as he was, Jinx always said he wore his heart on his sleeve. Then again, she was the only one who ever thought so.

“What can I say? Isha's a romantic.”

“Yeah,” he huffed, “ Isha’s the romantic.”

And, despite all the silly teasing and waving it off as the product of a child making her go to all the theater representations, the singers at the inn, and whatever books they could put together, he remembered Powder to be a romantic too.

She was a different kind of romantic, though, back then. The kind with big dreams and starry eyes that wanted to grow up to be the kind of girl that pushed the monsters away— I want to be as cool as Vi, she used to say, that way we can free the Undercity . A little revolutionary; and romantic because she could actually imagine a kind world. Ekko didn’t know anyone else who could, even now, as they tried to build Zaun all over again. 

She was a romantic in the way people who only ever wanted to help were.

Benzo used to call her an artist.

Now, she was romantic in a different way; like she didn’t believe in the world but she believed in some of its people, and Jinx— that had always been her, he realized in retrospect. All her wildest fantasies and her biggest romances had always been about her people. 

She believed in Zaun because she believed in her family, and she wanted to help because she wanted to show she loved them.

She was an artist because she was a romantic and she was a romantic because, to her core, she was defined by how much she loved her kin. 

She was an artist now because she was painting Ekko’s cheeks golden under her hands, and she was a romantic because her loyalty was still somehow intact. 

It was special, he thought, to be loved by Jinx. 

Ludicrously, she didn’t seem to agree. 

“That must suck,” she smiled, small and sardonic, “being tied to me.”

“I don’t know,” Ekko smiled, tugging the flimsy gold tying them together, pulling her towards him. “I think it’s pretty okay.”

She was smiling when he kissed her.

Chapter Text

iii. 

It was a Monday morning when the little, crooked door to Jinx’s apartment— which really, was basically their apartment at that point— slammed open with a loud bang.

Ekko didn’t even flinch, more than used to Jinx's hectic entrances. She called them making a statement . He thought she just liked being loud. 

“Okay, boy wonder!” Jinx announced, making him roll his eyes as he pulled her down on the couch beside him.

And because Ekko was a good boyfriend who hadn't seen her since she went down to the inn, so early he was sure it could be counted as dawn, he just smiled and leaned against her. 

“Good morning, Jinx.”

She, of course, didn't acknowledge the greeting and kept talking grandiosely, like she'd never been interrupted in the first place. 

“Time to set some boundaries!”

He blinked, unsure of how to respond.

He wasn't even sure what she meant.

“How do you even know that word?”

“What, you think you can raise an angry teenager without learning that word?” She snorted, bringing her hand up to his face, and softly running her thumb over it as she guided him onto her shoulder. Ekko, because he would do anything for her to keep touching her, complied, contently resting his cheek in the crook of her neck.

He shrugged; that kind of thing didn’t really exist in Zaun. Boundaries were a privilege afforded by those safe enough to ask for them. The last time he’d had the chance was when Benzo let him have a small lock in his tiny room, even if the space could barely fit his bed and there was nothing to walk into.

Then, almost as an afterthought: “Isha’s not that angry…”

“You’re gonna have to step up if you’re helping me raise this girl. “Missed her birth, missed her growing up… Lots of making up to do!” Jinx hummed, with a disapproving little click of her tongue. 

She didn’t even bother to acknowledge his comment; he supposed that was fair, her righteousness was reminiscent of Vi in her younger days, after all. 

“We already went over this!” Ekko laughed, wondering what the hell about her made him this bright and cheerful; he didn’t really think he had it in him after a while, but it was probably good that he did. “We are not Isha’s biological parents!”

Like a shark smelling blood, Jinx immediately turned to him, looking vicious. Already, he could feel her circle around him, a million miles per minute. 

“But we’re her parents?” Then, in her little sing-song voice, she chirped out: “Lots of stepping up to do…”

Ekko huffed, looking away, though he made no effort to push himself off his girlfriend. “I’m whatever she wants me to be.”

Whatever you want me to be was implied.

He wasn’t quite sure if it was too soon, just shy of five months, to make big, sweeping declarations like that, but he meant them wholly. 

And maybe Powder wasn’t quite right in saying Ekko wasn’t one to give up on anything, but he couldn’t imagine something less likely than a world where he walked out on them. Not now that Jinx touched him like she used to, and Isha asked him to braid her hair every morning despite Jinx’s whole betrayal routine. 

Sometimes, he caught himself counting the seconds before it all ended. Four ticking sounds played steadily in the back of his mind, a headache he’d long gotten used to— it was hard to imagine a future for himself

“Whatever.” She huffed, suddenly flustered. “I’m more like a weird older sister, anyway.”

“I’m not sure weird-older-sister’s boyfriend is a family dynamic.” He teased, nuzzling into her in the soft way he only was in Bilgewater. 

“Stop trying to distract me!” Jinx snapped, though there was no heat behind the words, and he could see, perfectly well, the smirk on her lips around the word family. It was strange to think he wanted this as much as he did. “Talk time!”

“What do we have to talk about?” He sighed, thinking a part of him still dreaded the idea of one wrong move being their last, and remembering Vi, desolate and alone telling him a life lived in fear was not a life at all.

“Like so many things.”   She huffed, looking decidedly unimpressed with his stalling. “Come on, Ekko, don’t play dumb with me now.”

“I would never. Just can’t match your genius, I guess.” He teased, feeling the tension build up in his shoulders at her short tone; maybe she’d finally throw it in his face, all of it— the fact that he gave up on her, the fact he discouraged her own sister from finding her, the fact he only ever came back for her after meeting Powder.

“Oh, please, everyone knows you’re genius and I’m madness.”

The familiar words made his heart soar and plummet all at once; an old memory. 

Powder’s voice in his ear, her arm around his shoulders, pulling him close.

I’ve never seen you give up on anything, Ekko . 

It was the first time she’d said his name in years and it wasn’t even his. It wasn’t even the truth. 

Because Ekko had given up, again and again, a thousand times over, it felt like all he ever did. Yet he called his name like he really believed that about him; called him Ekko with the cadence of loyal .

He’d got called a lot of things over his lifetime— the first one was doll . It was the only way he could remember his mother’s voice, that word: doll. He didn’t recall anything else, not how she said his name or how she smelled, but he remembered doll with an ease he couldn’t remember much else. The word was still bouncing against his skull, even when he didn’t know anything else about her.

No one else called him that after she died in the riots. It’s not like he wanted them to, either.

The second thing he’d been called was Little Man, and he’d absolutely hated it. 

It didn’t sound like doll; it didn’t lull at the end or come out all in one breath, rushed and honeyed over like the molten caramel he’d only ever tried on his fourth birthday but remembered since. Little Man was long and choppy and didn’t hold the same fragile softness of a doll. It wasn’t the person his mother had named him to be.

But he grew into it, albeit too late, once Vi had been taken away. Suddenly, he missed Little Man as much as he missed doll and he missed Vi as much as he missed his mother, maybe even more. It made him want to throw up; just like the first time, no one called him that again. 

After that, he didn’t get any new names.

He was just Ekko. 

It wasn’t as comforting or as weightless as he’d imagined it to be. His name was much heavier than anything he’d been called before.

There was the occasional boss but it was more teasing than sincere, and he never claimed it. Nor did he think anyone else did. 

Similarly, there were the haunting nicknames Jinx would throw at him on their odd encounters. Boy Savior was the worst one. Like Powder’s kind words, it was untrue; he hadn’t saved anyone. It was all too easy to give up on his childhood fantasies after that one.

There were a lot more words that came with them, but he didn’t really think they were important. Any amount of praise, haunting lilts, and stupid taunts and jabs were soon forgotten, washed away by the blood on his hands. Anything he touched turned red; he couldn’t afford to grab what he was offered.

He was a leader; his people would always come before him, and as bathed in blood as they claimed to be, those sins were Ekko’s to take care of. The only moments of softness he allowed himself were those of fond admiration watching the Firelights dance and the children play.

Now, he was being offered something again, and it made no sense how quickly he took it. Inexplicably, he couldn’t find it in him to turn it away. He was supposed to, probably, but he couldn’t.

For once, he wanted to be a person, not a leader or a savior or even the lively child he’d grown out of.

He’d been called a lot of things, but not dumb. Not with the chiding cadence Jinx was uttering now, and not paired with the warmth of a hand that never intended to hurt.

But maybe he was dumb, thinking this could last forever and thinking she wouldn’t face him with all that he was.

Maybe he was dumb for thinking that just because she’d been worse, she’d think he was better.

Suddenly, he didn’t want to look at her anymore.

The clock that took permanent residence behind his ear ticked louder.

Jinx, of course, noticed.

“Hey,” she cooed, “look at me. This is important, Ekko.”

And damn her; damn her for using his name, and damn her for lowering her voice and damn her for every single thing that she knew made Ekko fold under the weight of her tenderness.

When he looked up, her eyes were guilty.

“I know we act like nothing happened. Between us, I mean,” she furrowed her brows, looking down, away from him. “But we have to talk about it, I— I don’t want to hurt you, Ekko. Not anymore.”

There she went again, saying his name like it was special.

His heart felt like it plummeted a hundred miles down to his feet. 

He couldn’t breathe.

He wanted to tell her there was nothing to talk about even if they both knew it was a lie.

“I don’t—” He was tired; he didn’t know what she wanted from him. It felt like all the fight left his body at once. He didn't know why he felt like he was being accused of something. “What do you want me to say, Jinx?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I just wanna talk things out, Ekko.”

Finally, he sighed, going boneless against her. There was no use in dragging things out, but this was sounding an awful lot like she was leaving again. But she wouldn't leave without Isha, and that only left one thing.

He stopped himself from recoiling. She hadn't said anything yet.

“Okay.”

At the end of the day, it didn't matter; Ekko would take anything she wanted to give him.

“I’m sorry.” She started, fiddling with her hands and looking down like she was too afraid to face him. She looked like she was about to cry. Ekko couldn’t imagine anything he wanted less.

“What?”

“I put you through so much shit.” She laughed, sounding dry and bitter and nothing like how she usually did. He missed her usual warmth immediately. “I— I was so sure that there was this curse. Wanna take out a family member? Get rid of a pesky sister? Call Jinx! She’ll find a way!”

“You aren’t cursed—”

“No. I’m not. But you know,” she giggled, knocking her head and sounding a bit hysterical, “fucked in the head, this one.”

She sobered up before Ekko had the time to say anything. He was almost glad she did; he had no idea what he would’ve said.

“I thought if I was gonna be a jinx, might as well own it, right?” She drawled out, sounding choked and angry and sad; all of Ekko’s grief splayed out in front of him. “But then Isha came along… and she was so good, Ekko. She was so so good. My sweet, baby Bunny. She was so perfect.”

Again, it felt like a thousand different things were hitting him at once.

Fondness for the beautiful girl who felt every bit like his daughter and sister and little protege as she would've if he’d known her his entire life. She really was perfect in the way only a daughter could be, and there was nothing more engulfing than the tenderness he felt when she sought him out.

Anger at the reality that at some level, she’d always known what she was doing, that she’d hid behind this mask of insanity and delusion; that she’d made up a curse they both knew was never real because the only curse they’d been born under was Piltover’s sole. Anger at Silco too for calling himself her father after letting her become a weapon instead of a girl.

Guilt for blaming her when he knew full well he would’ve turned out the same if he’d been taken in; if he’d been offered love and warmth and a place to stay, he wasn’t sure if there was much he’d say no to either.

Hurt, almost most of all, snaking and choking him like a desperate animal hunting for prey. There was no direction and no speed that would spare him from it; it had made a home in the spaces between his chest, and soon enough, he’d be consumed from the inside out. 

Isha was enough. Someone worth changing for.

He wasn’t.

It sent him back to Vi and Caitlyn all over again.

She hadn’t thought to look for him once since she got out of Stillwater. Not until he found her first and not until he found her with a bluebelly. 

It was a heartbreaking truth of his that he’d never be enough to make his family stay.

That probably wasn’t what Jinx meant.

He kept his mouth shut and didn’t try to rub the tears off her cheeks and despite that betrayal, she was still holding him.

“She made me look at things different, I think… Like I was wearing glasses. Things weren’t as bright anymore,” she huffed, “they didn’t hurt my eyes and spin my brain around. I could think clearly when I had to take care of her, you know?”

Despite the red, hot fire coiling in his gut, he nodded because things had seemed clearer when he played with the Firelight kids too. It made him remember who he was working for.

He wasn’t sure it was fair to expect her to feel that way about him when he hadn’t felt that way about her.

Suddenly, she inhaled, sharp and short, like she didn’t want to continue. The gesture finally made something in Ekko put out; she was just as scared as he was. He took her hand with a reassuring squeeze. 

She could finally look at him.

“When I thought Isha was dead…” She shrugged. “It’s like I had nothing to live for. What was the point, right? But then you talked to me and I— I don’t know, I guess I thought maybe things would be different that time?”

It felt like being shot right in his middle, straight between his ribs; a silver bullet going clean through.

You talked to me. 

You talked to me.

It didn’t sound right that he was, at least once, a priority to them like they were to him. He was the reason she’d stayed.

She chuckled wetly, rolling her eyes like the mere notion of things panning out for her was ridiculous and Ekko was overcome with the need to push every fear away and assure her they would’ve. He would’ve been a liar and she wouldn’t have believed him, anyway, but the soft glow in her eyes compelled him more than the fear globulating in his throat.

Jinx kept talking before he found the courage to speak. 

“And then Vi was about to die and I just couldn’t let that happen, Ekko,” She sniffled, squeezing his hand tighter, like a lifeline. “Vi was my world. She was better off without me.”

“Jinx—”

“I would've done the same if it was you.” 

Instantly, he snapped his mouth shut. His mouth went dry.

“Maybe it means less that way,” she shrugged. It doesn't change anything. But I would've done the same if it were you.”

Again, he found he didn't have words to answer with. It's not like he could deny he would've done the exact same thing for her and it's not like he could get mad at her for leaving him behind; he didn't really have that kind of fight in him anymore. He understood the second Isha turned to look at him for the first time.

“I was sure I was finally gonna blow up! Go out with a bang.” She huffed. “I don't know why I grabbed onto the vents, something just came over me, I guess… Dropped the bomb and dragged myself into the pipes. It was—”

He couldn't help himself.

“Stupid?”

She grinned; shook her head; laughed slightly, genuine this time. “Super cool of me.” 

Ekko smiled back, feeling a little lighter at the familiar sound. He realized the conversation was done before it started— he'd gladly let her stain his clothes with the blood on her own hands as long as she touched him.

“It wasn't exactly hard to find Isha after. It was a fluke, I guess, but the doctor that found her didn't exactly have time to follow up.” She snorted. “Not once he realized she was a sump rat, anyway.”

“Were you ever coming back?” 

The question burned its way up his throat.

She pursed her lips, again looking away. 

The look made him feel sick.

“I’m not good for you, Ekko. And Isha needed to get out as much as I did. I wanted her to see a world outside of Zaun and the war and the mines— somewhere without all my fucked up baggage.” She shrugged again, tiredly. “Turns out you can’t run away from dead people.”

He let go of her hand, pulling back, feeling her touch burn.

“You didn't plan on coming back.” 

The words made her bristle.

“You deserved a happy ending.” She shot back, looking up at him desperately like he'd somehow cornered her. 

It made no sense; she'd always been faster, smarter. It was always him that had been soft and predictable.

Now, he was sure he looked double as desperate, and maybe it was a bit scary.

“What happy ending?!” He hissed out.

Suddenly, she shot up, looking at him like he was the one being hurtful. “ONE WITHOUT ME THERE TO FUCK IT UP, EKKO! DUH.” 

“WHAT IF I WANTED YOU THERE?” He screamed back, equally as loud, equally as devastated.

Jinx’s resolve crumbled immediately, and she fell back on the couch. 

Her face fell, eyes wound shut and nose wrinkled unpleasantly, pulling her lips up with it.

“Why would you?” Her voice came out small.

“It doesn't matter. It wasn't your choice to make. Not if it was for me.”

“Well, I made it and I'm sorry !” She hissed, leaning back like she didn't want him anywhere near her. His anger dissipated as quickly as it had appeared.

He knew she meant it. 

Jinx didn’t say just say things she didn’t mean— especially not apologies.

“Yeah, well,” he shrugged, “I forgive you.”

“You shouldn't.”

He narrowed his eyes. “But I do. ”

For a second, they were both silent, still and on opposite sides of the couch, nothing like when they'd started. It made Ekko miss his Z-drive; now, he needed it most desperately.

Jinx blinked, closing her eyes and pulling a face. He could tell she was trying to calm down just as he could tell she wasn't doing a good job at it.

“I don't want to fight you.” She breathed out.

He wondered if they both sounded as tired as each other. Fighting had a way of chaining itself onto their bones and pulling.

“Then what do you want, Jinx?”

“I told you. I want boundaries.” 

Just like that, their little song and dance was starting to feel a lot like grief. He wasn't sure what the hell he was letting go of this time around. He didn't have much to lose in Bilgewater.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means , I got your good side.” She insisted, looking at him straight in the eyes so intensely he couldn't be the one to look away. “It means that I was terrible to you, and I don't want you to fall in love with her. ”

Ekko didn't know what to say to that— didn't know how to tell her that he was already in love with every version of her. 

“I want you to fall in love with me. This version of me; not the crazy girl that killed your crew.” She insisted, pleading. “I want to apologize and I want to be the best girlfriend. One you’re in love with for the right, sappy, disgusting reasons.”

He was, he was, he was .

“I'm sorry about that, too,” she gulped. “I just wanna make it up to you.”

Somehow, he wasn't sure there was anything to make up for anymore. Those versions of them felt like figments from a past life; a mirage that only existed in nightmares and hallucinations.

Really, if it wasn't for Isha's prosthetics, he wasn't sure he'd believe it happened.

He didn't want to think about the past anymore. He'd meant it when he told her to build something new— even if she did it without him.

Now, all he wanted was a seat on the table she'd painted.

“You don't have to.”

At that, her lips quirked a little at the sides. She was looking at Ekko like he was the most important person in the world. 

“I meant what I said, back then. I'm glad you built something new.”

She softened, scooting just slightly closer towards him. Immediately, he felt the pull of his muscles, reaching for her like gravity compelled them. 

“Just don't blow up or disappear this time, yeah?” And despite him laughing slightly, despite it meant to be a lighthearted jab, Jinx looked like it was the most disheartening thing she'd ever heard.

She reached her hand out slowly, letting it hover halfway to his face. 

Forgive me?

He took it in his own, pressing it against his cheek.

Of course.

“Nah.” She smiled. “I have two leeches to take care of now.”

He laughed, shuffling close enough to wrap his arms around her waist and send them both tumbling back in a fit of giggles.

Her heart was beating so fast against his, it was almost reassuring. Whatever it was that made everyone leave him behind, maybe that meant Jinx didn't see it. Maybe it really was for Isha, for him , more than herself, misguided as it was.

It was nice to feel like he could breathe again.

When he looked down at her, she still had the kind of determined look on her face making it clear he wasn't out of the woods. It would've been frustrating if it wasn't, at its core, one big confirmation that she cared.

“I was serious.” She insisted, wheezing slightly through her relieved laughter. “Just tell me if I do anything wrong.”

“Sure,” he sighed, squeezing her slightly tighter, “as long as you do too.”

At that, she rolled her eyes, though he could tell it was teasing. “Oh please, like Mister Perfection would ever do anything wrong.”

“I literally gave up on you until I was sent to a parallel universe. ” He huffed.

Just like that, Jinx pushed herself up, looking down at him with kind eyes and furrowed brows. “I wasn't your responsibility, Ekko.”

She said it like it was a fact— obvious.

All at once, the crawling feeling of discomfort washed over him again. He’d said the wrong thing; he’d fractured the fragile peace between them before it even started.

“I should’ve tried harder.”

“No. You shouldn’t have.”

I’ve never seen you give up on anything.

Lies, lies, lies.

“But I gave up on you.” He insisted, begging more than stating; that he needed her to understand. He couldn’t keep living in a world where every action could’ve been stopped but he gave up before he even tried, but even less could he live in a world where she thought he hadn’t cared.

“Ekko.” Just like that, she was cupping his face in her hands, looking soft and intense, and threatening to drown him with the tenderness with which she held him. “I wasn’t your responsibility.”

He sighed, falling against her in the understanding that she was right; that it was true.

It didn’t feel good or liberating. It only felt like a half-truth.

Maybe the understanding of how small they truly were when the whole world threatened to crush them was scarier than the guilt of thinking he could’ve prevented it. Somehow, the fear of victimhood was harder to deal with than the agency of guilt.

If it was never his responsibility, he never could’ve stopped it. 

He was always just a kid.

It felt choking to look at Isha and think he’d been smaller than her when he was left on his own.

It felt suffocating to know he was always powerless to circumstance, and even doubly so to know no adult cared enough to take him in, and do something. 

He was always just a kid, and now, the reality of it threatened to drown him.

He leaned into her, and let his head rest against his shoulder. “I know.”

He could almost see her grin as she wiggled under him to snake her arms around his neck and rest her head back on the cushions. “Good.”

“You done torturing me now?”

“I was hardly torturing you!” She scoffed. “This is what I get for wanting to clear the air, I guess… All I ever did was care! About your well-being!”

“Yeah, yeah, I love you too or whatever.” He guffawed, carefully tilting his chin and watching the way the words made her light up. The relaxed ease she was looking at him with made the whole conversation worth it. 

She pushed herself up on her elbows to better look at him and grinned. “You love me?”

“Why else would I be here?”

Falling back, she shrugged, annoyingly making her long hair tangle he was sure he was going to hate brushing later that night; mostly because of all the whining she’d do, and all his insistence that he wanted to do it anyway. 

He didn’t have the heart to tell her he kept practicing braids long after they became enemies. She didn’t ask, but he thought she knew— somehow, she still remembered how to retwist his locs.

“It’s just weird to think you wanted me around as much as I did. There were so many things I wanted to tell you,” she hummed, running the tips of her long nails up and down his neck. “Isha kept bugging me about writing you letters, but I didn’t think that would be fair.”

Somehow, the expected anger never came, and though he’d never admit it, he thought Jinx was right to want to talk things out.

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Thought you’d be better off without me, remember? Nobody needs a jinx around.” 

“Do you still think that?”

She shrugged again, still lazily scratching the back of his neck. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t, I guess. Isha taught me that too. She’s a real smart kid.”

He nodded, holding onto her just slightly tighter. “I don’t.”

“Then it’s whatever, I guess.”

Again, Ekko just nodded, letting himself sink against his girlfriend and marveling at the way the word bounced around his head incessantly. 

Girlfriend.

He’d never had a girlfriend before her. The commitment to the cause was always bigger than the commitment to his desire.

It wasn’t like it mattered when every rare encounter with Jinx sent him right back to fourteen and lonely— staring down the girl who promised she’d marry him so they could be together forever and watching her say she didn’t want him, mocking him with the same silly nicknames she used to tease him when they were little. 

They were children’s promises and puppy love, if he thought about it, but it screwed his head on straight in some backward way, every time.

And yet, now. 

Now was different.

The names went back to teasing, and the childhood nostalgia turned into present affection. A real bond, wrapping their fingers and tying them together. It never breaks, you know.  

He wasn’t fourteen and lonely anymore; he hadn’t been in a long, long time.

Looking at her, there was only today, tomorrow, and the day after ad infinitum. Every single one spent together, intertwined.

The word girlfriend felt permanent.

Except he wasn’t quite sure how long any of it would last; he’d told the crew to come back for him, after all. He’d all but confirmed his stay at Bilgewater was limited. It was always meant to be little more than a fucked up vacation.

He was never supposed to find permanence outside of Zaun. And even if, now, lying on the couch of what was irrevocably his home too, he couldn’t help but long to see how his familiar streets had changed in his absence.

He wondered, twirling the pink streak hanging in the front of Jinx’s hair, if she missed it too— if it would be too much to ask her to return with him when the time came or if he’d have to settle down in Bilgewater. He wasn’t sure he could choose.

He wanted desperately to ask, maybe beg, not to choose. Part of him didn’t think he could— it was her family and her country just as much as it was his, maybe even more, he wasn’t much more than a glorified substitute in Vi’s life, after all. It wouldn’t be fair to force a life she’d left behind back on her. Maybe it wouldn’t be fair to not give her the option too.

Ekko couldn’t help but sour, wondering at what point his fairness crossed the line into his selfishness. He often thought he wasn’t allowed those kinds of petty emotions, but lying with Jinx, realizing the life he hadn’t fought hard enough for, always made him feel like he was nothing but, no matter how much she told him otherwise.

I wasn’t your responsibility, Ekko.

I’ve never seen you give up on anything.

He no longer wanted words left unsaid thickening the air between them. 

“Hey, Jinx?”

She hummed, clearly content with the quiet display of affection they’d both fallen into. It made Ekko believe, at least a little bit, that the conversation would go better than he imagined. 

After all, he’d been wrong about her before,

“Why don’t you come back home with me?”

At that, she pushed herself up, leaving Ekko still half-laying on her lap, as she looked down with a concerned expression. Still, she didn’t look mad; it was reassuring if even a little bit. “Huh?”

And because Ekko always blurted out the wrong thing at the wrong time, the first words out of his mouth were: “I’m sorry I didn't tell you.”

Of course, she didn’t find them comforting, shooting up even further. “Tell me what, Ekko?”

“I, uh, I’m supposed to go back to Zaun.” He muttered.

Jinx froze; her fingers now rested, fully still, on the back of his neck. He wasn’t sure if they were shaking or he was.

“When?”

“I don’t know, in a couple of months, I think. This was kind of unexpected.”

This, of course, referring to the little life he’d shimmied into, forced his way in and settled down on, assuming the third chair in their dining set would be empty. None of it was ever in his plan; finding a place to fit in hadn’t even crossed his mind when he begged the captain to let him stay behind and breathed in the disgusting air of docks just as dirty and half as fishy as Zaun’s.

Yet, he didn’t want to leave it behind.

He thought if Jinx asked, he might tell the crew to go back without him, as long as they gave Vi the shell he’d picked out for her in Ionia. They were good people and Ekko used to be respected— he thought they’d do it, and he thought he’d be okay with it if it meant not leaving his new life behind.

Still, he had to ask otherwise. He had to bring it up, gather his courage, and even plead, a little bit, for the possibility of a life where he didn’t have to choose, even if he knew his answer before she asked the question.

“You’re leaving?”

He shrugged, feeling a bit hopeless at her empty tone. “No. Not unless you come too.”

Vacantly, Jinx shook her head. “I can’t ask you to stay.”

“Then can I ask you to come with me?”

At that, Jinx laughed, low and incredulous, though he couldn’t help but notice the way her hand curled around him, ever so slightly. “You can ask but I won’t say yes, boy savior.”

Sighing, he tilted his chin up, trying to find the best angle to look at her eyes. “So will you come with me?”

Humming, Jinx tapped one of her hot pink nails against her lips, pretending to think. “No.”

The wait was far too short for any sort of real consideration, and though he knew it was coming, he couldn’t help the disappointment that washed over him.

“Come on, why not?”

Jinx tilted her head, blinking away the slight distance clouding her eyes: like she was trying to really look at him. She looked like he was being stupid. “For her. Duh.”

Oh, Isha then. She’d said Isha needed to get out of the rundown city just as much as she had.

It made sense to think of what Isha would’ve wanted; the only reason he’d asked at all, now, was because he knew Isha wanted to leave too. He knew that, just like him, she wanted to stick to Jinx more than anything, but if given the choice, Zaun had beaten her bloody and damned but it was still home, and Vi, though estranged, was still family in the only way people you didn’t know but were told about could be.

“Bilgewater isn’t exactly safer for Isha than Zaun—”

She shook her head, smiling a little like it was sad how lost he was; like she was the one with reason to be confused. “For Vi, silly.”

It hit him, then, all at once.

Jinx didn’t know.

She didn’t know about how terribly wrong everything had gone; how her sister was alone because he was the last living, breathing thing tying her to Zaun and even that string had been gnawed so thin he was an ocean away.

He wondered if, somehow, she thought Vi was living a good life— happy and cushioned like he knew they'd both envisioned the second they set eyes on Caitlyn's silky straight hair. She couldn't know , if he thought about it, that Vi was running the dingy ashes of The Last Drop, working more hours than she slept, instead of hazing away in a queen-sized mattress with silk beddings and feathered cushions.

Somehow, in all their craze and romance and playing house with Isha despite Ekko never playing at all, he'd forgotten that Jinx thought Vi was doing exactly the same, a thousand times posher— better off without her.

The thought made his stomach tie itself into knots.

“Jinx,” he pleaded, “I really don't think Vi's better off without you right now.”

Like a shark smelling blood, Jinx's eyes instantly sharpened. “The hell's that supposed to mean?”

Truly, there was nothing he knew better than unfortunate timing.

“Um.”

And Isha, of course, despite never being his biological daughter at all, only knowing him for a few months, had taken to the same unlucky habit as she barged right in.

Jinx's head shot up instantly.

She softened just as quickly.

“Hey, Bunny.”

It was an opening; an out for the awkward conversation none of them wanted to have.

A smarter man would've let the issue go.

“We were talking about moving back to Zaun.”

He wasn't, in fact, a smarter man.

Jinx shoved him off his lap. Somehow, she still managed to be gentle with him.

Isha's eyes widened. She tilted her head, ever so slightly. Just like her sister.

Really?

“No.” Jinx snapped, at the same time Ekko breathed out a quick, “Yes.”

Jinx turned to him, looking betrayed but less angry than she would've been as a younger version of herself. Almost resigned.

Ekko shrugged. Isha was old enough to know what they were really talking about and they both knew it.

They turned to her. 

She blinked like she was unsure what was being asked.

“So?” Jinx ground out, choppy and unsure.

Isha pointed to her chest, biting her lip nervously, making Ekko think if he could chart every little habit of hers, they'd all trace back to Jinx.

It made him want to reach out, pull his girls together, and hold them happily; pretend they were a normal family having a normal conversation about whatever it was normal families talked about.

He didn't.

“Yeah, Bunny, we want to hear your opinion,” Jinx murmured, sounding impossibly gentle.

He was struck with the reality that whatever she said, Jinx wouldn't deny her.

He was struck with the reality that Isha knew this, that it was why she looked so unsure.

She turned to him.

All he could offer was a wobbly smile.

The living room felt a thousand times bigger than he knew it to be.

Isha was looking at Jinx like she was betraying her with her answer. Jinx knew what Isha was going to say before she signed it. Ekko kept his eyes down, just enough to see Isha's hands.

“I miss Zaun.” 

Jinx nodded jerkily, flinching back like she'd been slapped.

“Okay.”

Isha looked like she wanted to take it all back. She pushed her closed fist against her chest, circling it again and again, but Jinx didn't move.

And really, that was it, wasn't it? 

Isha missed Zaun.

The three of them knew what that meant.

Out of nowhere, Jinx sucked in a sharp breath, pulling harshly at the pink strand hanging from the side of her face. Her nose scrunched up, pulling her eyebrows forward and pouting her lips. 

Ekko knew the expression well.

He reached his hand out, just inches away from her face, ready to smooth the tension out, offer any warmth she'd take from him— and hesitated.

Isha didn't.

The couch sank instantly, whining beneath the weight. 

Ekko found himself half-leaning, half-falling on Jinx, who was curled into Isha like a lifeline.

For a second, none of them spoke.

Jinx’s shoulders were shaking.

Ekko felt like any ounce of extra tension would make the room itself burst at the seams.

He wasn’t sure if the soft wheezes were crying, and he wasn’t sure who they were from.

Then, Jinx burst out laughing, high and wet, and like her . 

Their living room was small and homey again. 

Soon, Isha was giggling too, never one to resist her big sister's cheer and, before he knew it, Ekko was practically dead weight against Jinx, laughing loudly.

“We're such a fucked up family.” She coughed, shaking her head and holding onto both of them like she couldn't bear the thought of letting go.

And really, Ekko didn't know what in the world possessed him to brightly, loudly exclaim. “But we're family!”

Just like that, all tension dissipated and Isha looked at him like he'd finally lost it— with the special kind of snark only thirteen-year-olds could manage— and Jinx laughed so loudly, that he suddenly didn't worry about mincing his words or missing his chances.

After all, there was a string tying them together that never broke— maybe if he tried hard enough he could wrap it around Isha too.

“Come on,” he wheezed, “I think we'll all feel better after lunch.”

Isha nodded eagerly, pushing herself up to land a soft peck against Jinx's cheeks and quickly rushing to the kitchen, clearly impatient to get started. He couldn't blame her; cooking had become routine now— a little song and dance laced with affection and fondness, even after bad moods and big fights. This was neither, technically, but they all needed the pick-me-up.

“We can talk about the whole moving thing over fishy pasta, I guess.” Jinx sighed, pulling herself up with a small smile.

He recognized the dish as one of Jericho's— greasy and heavy and undeniably the kind of comfort food that could only be made in Zaun. 

It was an olive branch, and he latched onto it gratefully.

Just like that, soon, the three of them were cramped together in their dingy kitchen. As always, Jinx was yelling orders and Isha was all too happy to grab her knife while Ekko was relegated to odd jobs helping around.

From there, it was easy to get lost in the sizzling sound of hot oil and the dull, choppy sounds of Isha's knife against the wooden cutting board. It was easier, still, to relish in the comfort of routine, ebbing the tension out of their shoulders, coaxing them into something brand new.

It was like that— with the raw skin of being scrubbed clean and the easy smiles of washed-off sins— that they ended up gathering around their graffiti-filled table and settled for lunch.

The pasta was creamy and soft, exactly how Ekko remembered it from the thousand plates he’d scared down as a kid. He wasn’t sure how Jinx had honed the recipe into perfection but he hadn’t had Jericho’s food in months so he wasn’t complaining. 

Even back at Zaun, eating like they were was a luxury.

And really, maybe Jinx was right, maybe it was impossible to take the city out of them because the three of them scarfed the food down like it would be ripped away if they didn’t eat fast enough. He could tell, looking at Isha’s calm face that it was instinct more than genuine fear— second nature, settled under her skin, pushing her before her mind caught up. By the looks of it, Jinx might’ve suffered it doubly so, stuffing her face so fast she looked like Vi. 

He was probably supposed to tell them to slow down, slow down himself; he didn’t want to be dealing with stomach aches and Benzo always told him he’d get sick if he ate too fast, but bad habits died hard and he didn’t comment on it. 

Between the three of them, the pot was empty in under twenty minutes.

It was, of course, only when Jinx realized there was no more starch to stuff her face with that she brought her hand down against the table, heavy and final, and loudly declared, “Time to get this over with!”

And because they were moon and tide, push and pull, Ekko took the liberty of balancing her newfound maturity out with a soft whine. “Ugh, now?”

“Yes, now.” Jinx snorted, always pulling him in, always balancing him out.

“I miss Zaun,” Isha repeated, signing slower like she’d somehow get through to them better— make the process faster.

Ekko honestly thought the conversation was going to be as quick as Jinx could physically manage to get away with. 

Predictably, the girl just shrugged, blowing her long bangs out of her face with a huff. “Can’t argue with that logic.”

“What?” Ekko felt like his eyes were bulging out of his skull; he’d expected quick but he hadn’t expected her to hear about two sentences between them and give in instantly. “That’s it?”

“You heard the kid.” Jinx snorted, reaching out to ruffle the top of Isha’s head. “She wants to go back to Zaun.”

He wrinkled his nose, feeling it couldn’t possibly be that easy even if they were doing little more than speeding up the inevitable. They were going to end up on a ship to Zaun the second Isha said she missed home. Everyone seated knew this. 

For some reason, he’d expected Jinx to put up a fight, futile as it would’ve been.

Maybe she missed home too. 

He didn’t ask but she ended up telling him anyway, a few weeks later curled into each other on their lumpy mattress, and he counted himself lucky. Trust felt like a blessing, felt like devotion.

“Is it bad that I’m excited?” She sighed, pressing her leg against Ekko’s like they were the only thing keeping her solid. He didn’t mind; he ran hot and she ran cold so really, it was a win-win and he would’ve let her even if it wasn’t.

“To go home?”

“Hm,” Jinx hummed, pulling herself closer to the point where her hair, now always loose, threatened to choke him. 

“No. I want to go home too.”

She looked up at him, sadder than he would’ve liked, and hesitated. “Really? You do know I’m going with you, right?”

“I was ready to stay in Bilgewater for your stubborn ass.” Ekko snorted, brushing her hair off his face and into his hands. “‘Course I know.”

“You’re so silly.” She grinned, shaking her head like she was in on some kind of cosmic secret he wasn’t privy to. Knowing she was always like this, it didn’t matter to him much, that teasing and jabbing were displays of affection akin to cooking and touching.

“We’re leaving in three weeks,” he shrugged, “just making sure you don’t get second thoughts.”

“Oh, please, I never back out from a deal.”

That much, at least, was true. With Jinx, what you saw was what you got; for all her tricks and ruses, she had no problem following through on her promises, especially not those regarding Isha. 

“It’s because you promised Isha, isn’t it?” He snorted.

Jinx grinned shamelessly. “Of course it is. That kid’s a spoiled brat.”

“Sure she is.” He laughed. “Wonder why.”

“Hey! You can’t say no to her either.” She whined, knowing Ekko had no retort to that particular fact, spoiling her almost as much as Jinx did with the odd exception of making her eat vegetables. “Plus, it’s different, okay? I promised.”

The vulnerability, the soft hesitance pouting her lips made his voice lower. “Promised?”

“That I’d take care of her.” She frowned. “That I’d make her happy and stuff… you know, keep her safe, don’t leave her behind; responsible shit.”

“That doesn’t include going back if you don’t want to.” He pointed out gently.

“Yeah, but.” She sighed. “She can’t go back alone, and Bilgewater isn’t good for her like it used to be She’s excited to go back too, been wiggling and humming all week.”

It was incredible, special, the lengths she’d go to ensure Isha’s happiness, to secure her trust. She hadn’t even asked, not really, to go back home— that had been Ekko— but just said she’d missed it and Jinx had heard enough. Maybe it was because she knew what it was like to miss a home she had no way of going back to.  

“Plus,” she smiled, a bit nostalgic in a fond way, lacking the bitter edge both of them were used to remembering their childhood with, “Zaun’s a better place to grow up.”

At the unimpressed quirk of his eyebrow, she huffed. “Kind of. At least I can let her go out and shit. ”

And well, Zaun was dingy, dirty, and unsafe, but it was home—the neighbors knew the streets, and the streets knew them. The neighbors recognized every kid around, or at least pretended to, and there was never a shortage of older kids pulling the runts behind dumpsters and pushing them up walls if Enforcers got too close.

In contrast, Bilgewater didn’t even have kids. He’d only ever seen Isha despite being months into his stay.

So he understood, on some level, that Jinx would feel better letting Isha go out and roam Zaun, even with the reek of the broken, rather than Bilgewater, infamous for the desperate souls that would do anything for a quick buck. He understood, most of all, the desire for her to go out with other kids.

“Yeah, no one wants to mess with Jinx and the Firelight leader’s kid.” He agreed, knowing it had been like that when they were young. Vander’s kids and Benzo’s boy were famous, known, and memorized, for being completely off-limits. No one wanted to anger the Hound, and now, no one would want to anger them.

Jinx’s drawl was slow and soft when she parroted his words back at him. “Our kid, huh?”

“I meant my girlfriend’s baby sister?” He teased.

“You’re so corny.” She snorted, stretching out against him, now every inch of skin they could manage pressed together as she leaned in to kiss him.

It had become their stupid thing now, sort of, like they couldn’t be too sweet without taking the edge off, adding a hint of teasing, fond as it was. You’re so cheesy was always met with a kiss and any similar sentiments Ekko expressed always led up to his hands in her hair.

They didn’t know it when Jinx kissed Ekko on the bed of her Bilgewater apartment three weeks before they left it behind, but soon, it would become a staple. A quiet intimacy meant only for each other to understand.

It was with the same wrinkled nose and giggle of you’re so gross that Jinx finalized what little paperwork there was so Wybjorn could officially take over the inn and keep the little apartment above it. 

Of course, Jinx had made him promise to keep the paint on the furniture as a small reminder that they’d managed to find a home away from home. Wybjorn, because he was secretly soft, said he didn’t plan on doing otherwise and shared his own promise of keeping her obnoxious no-weapons rule and a seat for her at the office.

It was strange to remember how easily his girlfriend managed to charm everyone around her. 

Ekko was the one who snorted out a careful sappy when, on their last night in the apartment, Jinx pulled him to dance in the kitchen and then into the living room, swaying softly in the hall and by the table— all over the house, really— while she hummed some old, sad tune because it was the only one she knew. 

He kissed her right after and Isha made loud, exaggerated gagging noises the whole time.

Neither of them said anything on the docks, though; that felt far too intimate, too special to be tainted. Ekko didn’t think he or Jinx could talk, anyway. It made little sense to, and there was little to be said through the lumps in their throats threatening to choke them. That last time, watching the skyline fade, they just held Isha tight and didn’t say anything before giving her a quick peck atop her head. It would be her to wrinkle her nose then. 

You guys are so dumb , she’d signed, leaning into them. 

That was all in their future— when their thing was established and solid as a little ritual to cement the peace between them. It was a warning sign, an inside joke, permission: I’m going to kiss you now. Can I kiss you now?  

But the meaning of it never changed, it had been the same from the very beginning.

So, that night, they talked about Zaun, the future, and how Isha was their kid even if she wasn’t. Then, Jinx told him he was corny and Ekko just laughed, answering enough: Of course.

Her lips were soft and there was no need for him to fake the content sigh of lying in a temporary bed together in their temporary home. 

Another version of him— the one that always felt he was running out of time, that no four seconds were ever truly enough to catch up— would’ve dreaded the inevitable fate of packing and leaving. He would’ve grabbed the suitcase and made it right then, seeing no use in time spent on something that wasn’t built to last. 

But none of that felt fair or right when he lay with Jinx on a mattress he’d most likely never see again. It was nice to relish in small comforts that didn’t last forever. The only time he was ever wasting was that which he spent worrying about how long it would last. 

It was the kind of thing he hadn’t realized until she forced him to talk it out but sometimes, all he ever did was grip so tightly to the present moment, waiting for it to stick, that he lost the entire thing.

Isha, snarky and all-knowing, had matter-of-factly informed him that it wasn’t healthy over dinner.

Jinx cackled out some quip about her scary intelligence finally being turned on him.

Ekko laughed it off and tried really hard not to count seconds in the back of his head or worry about how long the present would last or how solid it felt. He kind of hated being called out by a little girl, but he loved it was his baby girl so he couldn’t stay mad. 

It was nice to know she could handle herself.

Distantly, he thought it would make sure she didn’t end up like him, and the thought was comforting even if he wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be.

But she was right, and there was no harm in taking joy in small, fleeting moments of the present so he just thought about how soft Jinx’s lips felt as they lay on the lumpy mattress. 

He thought about how, while the apartment was always meant to be in his life for a short time, that didn’t make it any less special. 

He thought about how he’d finally build a present that would translate into a real future.

Then, he shook his head and smiled at his girlfriend again.

She was already looking at him curiously; he’d drifted off again, then.

“What’re ya thinking about, space boy?” She drawled, sleepily curling into him.

“Nothing. Just excited to decorate our next apartment together.”

Jinx beamed so wide that he thought she really was the moon— big, and silver: swallowing the sun.

Chapter Text

i.

Sometimes, when business was slow, Vi closed her eyes and pretended.

She pretended a tall woman with slim fingers wrapped her arms around Vi's waist. She pretended she could feel thin, long hair tickling the back of her neck. She pretended she could feel her breath against her ear. 

With time, she'd grown into a damn good actor. The kind more immersed in their roles than their lives; they existed in abundance down at the fissures. She used to watch them with Powder, thinking their crazy fantasy was just a game of pretend they played.

Now, Vi understood. Sometimes, she pretended so much she got lost in it and started to consider the reality of it.

She considered running topside and begging on her knees. She considered promising that no matter who she ended up with, she'd never love them more than she did Cait. 

She considered going back to saying her name like a prayer and not a death sentence.

Then, someone would walk in and gesture for Vi to serve them a beer, and she would be back in her real life. The pressure around her middle was an old apron she'd found. The hair against her neck was thick and coarse and smelled nothing like mint or citrus. There was no one kissing her ear, or whispering endearments, or even close at all.

The game was over; the curtain on her performance called.

Vi was alone.

Even Ekko was somewhere far away; out of her reach. She couldn't know when he was coming back. With time, she started to wonder if he was coming back at all. 

She wouldn't force him to even if she found a way to; her grief was hers alone.

It was good for him to stay away, anyway. 

Ekko had always been like that— so hesitant to leap but so fully immersed once he did. He never gave up on a single thing. The boy had a one-track mind and a one-track heart. She knew because she was the same way, and because of how he looked at her sister. 

(If she even was her sister anymore.

Vi had told her she wasn't.

Vi was a liar.)

It felt like a curse, most of the time. It hadn't panned out well for her once . It was starting to get old. 

Vi was starting to get old. Or Undercity old— same difference. It didn't matter anymore; these days, she had nothing to do with Piltover.

It only made her want to betray everything she stood for some of the time. The thought burned down her throat and choked her all of the time.

She couldn't help it. The guilt that kept her company asked her if that made a difference.

It probably didn't; not with how badly she wanted her old life back. 

Vi was a lot of things but she'd never been a liar. She could admit, at least to herself, that if Caitlyn walked in— if she told Vi she loved her, asked her to leave everything behind, asked her to kiss her — she'd do anything she asked of her. She'd take anything Caitlyn wanted to give her and she'd take it gratefully, desperately.

She used to think she was stronger than that, somehow better. She'd left Caitlyn for a reason. She wanted to believe her morals, her identity , were stronger for whatever affection she had for a girl she knew she'd barely spent any time with. 

Except that wasn't entirely true. Temptation choked her more every day she spent apart from her family. 

Ekko used to tether her. He always thought he didn't— said he wasn't Jinx, that he couldn't replace her. But Vi never saw him as a replacement at all. He was her little brother, just as he'd always been. And he kept her grounded, just like he always had.

Yet, somehow, between the years spent in prison and the months spent with Caitlyn, she'd let herself forget. 

One track mind, one track heart.

It was always about finding Jinx, about getting her sister back. There was no point in letting anyone in— there was no point in trying for a new family. There was no point in trying for anyone else .

Somehow, she hadn't realized she missed her little brother just as much until she left topside eight months after the war and he welcomed her with open arms.

He'd always been far too good. Vi used to worry the cities would eat him alive when they were little. 

Now, with Ekko far away, she felt the ache of his absence in the same place under her ribs that she felt her sister's. That too was getting old.

It was nearing two years since he left and Vi was starting to fear she was finally, truly, alone. Just as she'd been in the pit. 

She hoped not— she'd never been good at handling solitude. It made her feel stuck in time; static. 

(Caitlyn used to say that was a symptom of her time in prison. She said funny things like that: symptom. Vi wondered what she would've thought of the symptoms of Undercity living.)

Vi never wanted to be alone. She saw no point in herself if she couldn't serve the people around her. She was only herself when she was taking care of someone. No one wanted her anymore. She was unneeded, overall.

The only thing keeping her steady was The Last Drop. She was needed there. Kind of— it was good enough. 

After the initial building efforts had given her an outlet to hammer and throw heavy shit around, there was a lot of organizing to do. 

No one had touched the ashes of her old place because, even if they'd lost all respect for her , they still held onto Vander. 

At least they didn't stop her when she took hold of it. That was more mercy than she'd expected, and she took it tenfold. 

It was a slow road to earning back the city's trust. Suddenly, she was no hound— just the Councillor's lapdog. A mutt too desperate for attention; the kind that would always go back to the hand that fed it once, no matter how many times it slapped its snout after. 

But The Last Drop was missed and Vi's heavy strength was needed. Those who remained in the Undercity were weak and frail, and she was still solid, somehow, despite it all. 

It was blood calling for blood and when all was said and done, Vi would always be Zaunite. 

It was the only pride she had left.

Vander always told her that— to remember where she came from, to know who she was. Her identity, he said, was the last thing they could take away from her and one of the first things they'd try to.

She didn't feel like she had much of an identity anymore, though. Most days it consisted of gritted teeth and half-hearted laughter while she chatted with the regulars.

At most, it was heavy fists and heavier blows when she fought— it was, probably, the only part of her she had left.

It made her wonder if Stillwater had managed to beat everything else out of her already. 

Then, made her hate how prison still affected her, leading her to train doubly as hard.

Strangely, it was Sevika who'd become her sparring partner, and she was all too willing to tell her stories of their youth. Apparently, everyone knew each other in a younger Zaun.

Horrifyingly, Vi didn't find her time with her unpleasant, even when her fists met her jaw. She found the sting satisfying. She'd lose herself in it again if she could. 

Unfortunately, Sevika was smart behind her thick skull and she cut Vi off as soon as she got caught up in it. Punching yourself wasn't as fun, and the opportunity to knock Sevika on her ass always reigned her in enough to pull her back out of it.

But really, those fractured moments and the dizzying loudness of her bar was the only identity she had to claim. 

She couldn't bring herself to let go of it. It was jagged and lacking but it was hers. That had to mean something— Vander said so.

So, for some reason, she still held onto it with fierce desperation. She couldn't tell if it was Vander's voice in her ear or her sister's eyes looking up as she plummeted to death. She didn't think it mattered all that much as long as she kept hearing it.

Caitlyn would've told her that wasn't healthy, but that didn't mean shit to her anymore. 

At some point, Vi had forgotten the difference between a gentle hand and a gun to her stomach, so really, she'd never been the best about her health.

It didn't matter much, anyway. It wasn't like she'd had any plans past the end of the day, every day.

The thought was bitter against the tip of her tongue— an admittance she wasn't ready to hear out loud. Especially so when she saw the big, Piltie events featuring Sheriff Kiramman and Zaun's one and only, Sevika with no title to speak of. 

It felt like losing— made her blood boil with the constant reality of being just some mutt . 

She'd once told Caitlyn she was the dirt beneath her nails. That had never felt more true than it did now— Vi was nothing but grime. 

At least , she thought, rinsing out the tall jugs in preparation for the surge of nightly customers, there's nothing as honest as dirt .

It was useful and alive and made things grow, and Vi felt like she was losing it a little bit, yes, but her frantic thoughts were right and it was true.  

If Vi was dirt she was useful and she was honest— she was good.

She was good, good, good .  

Maybe if she kept herself open enough, eventually, something would grow in the convoluted little metaphor she was hiding behind. 

(Vi wouldn't let it if something tried.

Nothing did.)

It was hard to grow anything, though, in land that had been barren almost as long as it had been around. She didn't understand how she was supposed to come back from that. She didn't know if she wanted to.

Again, she gritted her teeth and kept her head down and pretended Caitlyn's face was buried against her neck, kissing her with the same love Vi had grown greedy with. 

Sometimes, she reminded herself beautiful things didn't grow in barren soils. It only made her feel better for about half a minute— before she remembered she hadn't seen Caitlyn in years.

Thankfully, her thoughts were quickly interrupted with the characteristic, heavy steps of big, leather boots that could only mean expensive. 

She sighed, turning to pour a beer before she even looked up. At the very least, she'd been pulled out of her familiar spiralling.

Her first patron of the night was, as usual, an old member, maybe friend, from the force.

It was strange to see him walk into her bar when he was still so very clearly not Undercity. But Vi welcomed him in, anyway, and with time, so did the other Zaunites. 

No one was proud enough to refuse strong arms and healthy hands after a war, even if they all felt kind of pathetic, despicable, for it.

He sat down right across from her, center-left, like he always did.

She turned, slamming the jug down on the bar with a nod. “Hey, Steb.”

Sometimes, she thought he was just here out of obligation— some misguided, fucked up sense of responsibility to Loris, who'd watched after her before him. That he just wanted to check up on her, maybe, from the short time they'd spent together on that cursed task force; he'd always been stupidly loyal even if he'd never really known her.

Or maybe, in the back of his head, he thought she was weak. Maybe he thought he was the kind of woman that needed supervision, a fucking babysitter . That sounded even worse.

The thought made her sick.

Still, she never kicked him out. Maybe she wanted the company more.

The man just nodded, gratefully taking the beer and looking up at her with his cold eyes.

“What is it?” She sighed.

And Steb, because his real life purpose was to annoy her, quirked an eyebrow with an unimpressed tilt of his head. She hated how expressive the damn fish was.

“What do you want me to do?” She growled, more annoyed with herself than him. “I can't just up and leave and I can't go back with the pilties.”

At that, he just waved his hand, slightly. An eh kind of gesture implying Vi had any semblance of a choice, and despite her fantasizing about that very thing a few minutes ago, she had a short fuse and a shorter temper.  

“Fuck off. Cait— Kiramman can go to hell for all I care.”

“Cait?” He snorted, again flaring up her irritation with the knowledge that he knew perfectly well what the slip up meant.

The fact that he was still friends with her made Vi want to cry. He knew better than she did what Caitlyn would've thought.

She didn't ask about it— she didn't think she had it in her to. It wouldn't help anyone for her to know.

It wasn't like any answer would be satisfying. Fact was Vi was bigger than herself, she always had been; no response would change anything.

These days, the only thing keeping her upright were the people looking for Vander and settling for her instead. She couldn't leave them behind, just as they didn't leave her.

Half the time, she was just grateful they settled at all— she had nowhere to go without it, and being purposeless was more miserable than being treated like topside’s dog.

“Hop off my dick, Steb.” She huffed, sounding more tired than she had any right to be and leaning into the bitterness like a crutch, regardless.

The man just hummed, shaking his head lightly and taking another careful sip of his beer. 

It never failed to piss her off.

He'd always drunk politely, like he was scared of getting anything too dirty or he simply didn't know how to— like a topsider. It always felt like a slap in the face to Vi, who'd been raised with loud laughter and louder spills. She hadn't even known one could drink like a topsider.

She tried to remind herself that her bitterness was hers; that letting it consume her wouldn't fix her and wouldn't fix the world she lived in.

Yet sometimes things got too stifling, too big, and the burning at the base of her stomach threatened to consume her. Times like those, she missed drinking her life away in pit fights and telling herself there was no purpose to her, anyway.

Just as responsibility kept her grounded, it kept her down, and half the time it was bigger than her resolve.

Most of the time she had to remind herself that even if Ekko never came back— even if everyone she loved were nothing but ghosts— she was fighting for him. 

The Last Drop was always about kids like Ekko and adults like Vander. It was the whole point of it, of everything. Now, it was the whole point of her , even if, deep down she knew tying herself to it was a dangerous game. 

But because Steb was a know-it-all, her thoughts were interrupted by his low voice and calm tenor. “He'll come back.”

The reassurance didn't bring her comfort.

“I wouldn't.” She spat, watching as a new group of men settled in front of her.

Again, Steb just looked at her blankly, and he didn't need words to call her a liar. Vi resented the fact he was right. It didn't matter if he was because the fact remained that she wasn't Ekko, and he had no reason to return. 

She did. 

It wasn't a very good one when said aloud but it was hers, and like it had always been, it was her makeshift family.

The guilt ate her alive— she'd abandoned her baby sister after all— but she'd walk through burning coal for just a second more with her family. Any one of them, it didn't matter who.

All she'd want in return was their forgiveness; they wouldn't like who she'd become— she didn't like who she'd become. 

It was pointless to try and change it when Ekko had left for good and everyone else was long dead. 

Really, she never expected a reunion. 

And even when she'd indulged, when she'd imagined a life with no hole replacing her guts, she'd never imagined the replacement to be anger. 

She'd never expected to see her sister again, but she'd especially never expected to see red if she ever did.

She didn't expect, most of all, for a normal night ending up with Vi roughly pulling Sevika behind the bar and disappearing upstairs. She hadn't missed a shift since she started; The Last Drop was always open— Vi never missed a night.

Maybe that's why Sevika, with blood as thick as Vi's, let her hide upstairs for no money at all. The Ogre had grown soft with age and Vi's insides, twisting and turning, burning red, were thankful for it. 

Still, it was never how she'd imagined getting her sister back.

But when it finally happened, every expectation was thrown out the window.

It was wholly unexpected, all of it: the blue-haired woman looking at her unsurely, Sevika's quiet kindness, Steb’s sad smile. 

It wasn't unexpected when she crouched over the toilet and hurled, feeling the tears from the acidity mix with tears from her grief.

But Vi didn't know that when she told Steb to stop needling her and she didn't know it when between the hoarding wave of patrons, a small group walked in at ten. She had no reason to.

Looking up, still taking turns bickering with Steb, a newly-arrived Sevika and a group of older Firelights, she saw blue hair and a kid she didn't recognize. 

The group itself was fairly small and pretty normal, but, like it always did, the blue felt like a punch in the gut. 

Vi was used to seeing blue in everything. 

She was used to being haunted. 

And yet, every time it felt like a second chance being given and ripped away all over again.

It didn't matter because she quickly realized all three of them were wearing the same shade of Powder’s blue. And while the smallest girl's color was fading, and the man only had his tips done, it only made sense to assume the woman had gotten a dye job recently. 

Jinxers, then.

They were, at once, Vi's favorite and most dreaded customers.

She herself has dyed a small streak of her bangs electric blue in memory of her sister, but every time one of them walked in, she could barely lift her head. Shame and ire and guilt hit her all at once, and Vi saw every face her sister had ever made at her except her last moments of adoration. She always busied herself before she could.

They didn't know her. Vi knew her. And Vi knew she would've hated the way they worshipped her, saw her as more than she was, even if they were right.

And yet, they honored her. They recognized their sister's sacrifice— they believed in revolution. She was liberty guiding her people, one of them had winked at her. Hearing it somehow put her at ease.

It was nice to know her sister was loved even in death. 

It was more than Vi expected for herself. All at once, the same pesky thoughts of running back to an old flame overcame her, and she shook her head, zeroing in on the new customers.

It was easier to fall into familiar banter with half-drunk patrons. Except it didn't take long for her to clock the fact she'd never seen them before. 

It was strange for her to miss anyone in Zaun. She knew the people as well as she did the streets; they were mapped in her head, etched into her memory like wrinkles on her palm forever. 

Newcomers, then.

It was about another five seconds before Vi clocked the fact that she did know them.

Her lungs squeezed shut. 

She thought seeing her sister only happened in dreams; that she was blessed with only being terrorized at late hours in the haze of half-sleep and her cold sheets.

She shook her head, wishing the vision away— she'd slept less than she should've the night before and really, it must be catching up to her. 

Once, Tobias Kiramman said the body kept score, and while Vi wasn't sure what he meant, maybe this was it: a hallucination making up for the hours missed at night.

She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping they wouldn't be there when she opened them.

They only got closer. 

It was almost dark enough for her to pretend not to recognize them, but the woman's roots weren't showing, and her head wasn't blue with the memory of fresh dye. 

There was no dye with that exact tone, anyway. Every one she'd seen was just a little off, even Vi's. There was something about Jinx blue that simply could never quite be recreated; not to her eye, at least.

This, however, was the perfect blue. It stuck out in her memories in flashing lights.

The woman was unmistakably her sister. 

All at once, anger slammed right into her, righteous and hurt, making Vi realize she'd never let go of it at all. 

She didn't think it mattered when Jinx walked up to the bar like no time had passed at all. It didn't matter when her sister looked completely different and Vi hadn't been there to see it for a single minute.

In the back of her mind, she thought she was right to be mad, and for once, she allowed herself the anger that had never been expected of her, not truly. 

Being angry for herself, she found, felt completely different. Unlike her usual vicious wrath, this was mellow and shy— a subdued thing that wasn't quite sure it should stick its head out.

She couldn't even find her voice. All she could hear was the thrumming of her own heart against her ears, deafeningly loud. 

For a second, she was hit with some primal fear, something settled deep within her core telling her to get away, backed into a corner. It made her want to lunge forward and beat Jinx's face in. It made her forget why she'd missed her at all.

Still, Jinx had the absolute fucking gall to lean on the bar and look straight at her. 

“Violet?” Like she was the confused one.

The hopeful lilt in her voice instantly set her alight with disgust— pure and unadulterated like the one that had taken her when she found her family lying dead on the floor.

She was all but ready to twist her mouth into a scowl and spit right in her face when she recognized the feeling.

It was the same as that night.

Suddenly, the only feeling she could register was overwhelming nausea.

She was still the same monster she had been— she couldn't even remember why she thought she was better. 

Instantly, her hand was on Sevika's arm, roughly dragging her behind the bar, refusing to look in her sister's direction.

Again, she wondered if they were even sisters.

She couldn't quite remember what she said to get Sevika to stay but Vi must've been green enough in the face for Sevika to take pity on her.

As soon as she saw her nod, she was rushing up the stairs, running straight into the bathroom.

She couldn't breathe.

Her anger was choking her.

She gagged, clutching the toilet like her life depended on it and retching out nothing but bile and acid. It was getting into her eyes, up her nose— they were burning, her whole face was. 

It reminded her, again, of the night her family died, consumed in massive flames. Her face had burned then too; she'd wished the fire had taken her with them.

Even the tears burned their way down as Vi sobbed, except this time, no one was there to silence her. She kind of wished there was. The sound of her own retching was starting to get unbearable.

Unfortunately, her wishes came true and soon, there was a presence behind her, gentler and subtler than she ever hoped for. It took her a while to realize there were arms on her back after that; fluttery light, afraid to touch her.

In her desperation, Vi couldn't remember the last time she'd felt solid hands against her and leaned back shakily— she didn't even care who it was.

The touch put her at ease until she turned and saw her sister's eyes looking back at her, full of a concern that just made Vi want to scream.

She had no right to console her, no right to fake her concern, and no right to show up.

It wasn't fair.

It wasn't fair at all.

She wanted to yell at her, hit her, make her go away.

She'd already made it plenty clear she didn't need Vi. 

But somehow, she choked, only managing a half-sob, and the words were out of Jinx's mouth before the anger climbed out of Vi's throat.

“Please don’t hate me.”  

It was barely a whimper.

Jinx was pleading with her— begging her. 

And she might not need Vi, but Vi needed her.

All her ire dissipated at once. She'd been that way since she was young, never able to stay mad for long.

She shook her head, suddenly lost. 

“You’re my baby sister,” she croaked, “how could I hate you?”

Jinx looked crushed.

“Don't you?”

Somehow, the words made Vi's familiar guilt creep up again. It felt like it was rising up along her bile. 

This time, Jinx pulled back her bangs as she leaned over the toilet miserably. Suddenly, her concern didn't seem fake.

Again, Vi was hit with the distinct feeling of guilt. It slammed into her and sent her reeling with the sudden, feverish need to hear her sister say she forgave her.

Vi could never truly hate Jinx but how could Jinx not hate Vi ?

She'd betrayed her a thousand times over, again and again, until it was too late to take it back. She'd loved Jinx the way Vi wanted to love her, not in the way her sister needed. 

She hadn't been a big sister, not truly, since Powder was still around and since Powder was twelve. 

By the time she managed the strength to sit upright, all she could think of was the fact that Jinx was real and Jinx was there and Jinx was talking to her and holding her .

Even leaning against her, it didn't feel like any of it was true. 

For a second, Vi was sure that, if she turned, her sister would be gone. She'd leave her alone again — in the dark, left behind, unneeded over and over again. She'd go back to being nothing but a waste of space; purposeless.

She turned, looking up to Jinx's new face and feeling every nerve within her scream with the reality that it was unrecognizably hers. She was a wholly different person. She still looked how she always had. It made no sense. Her head spun.

Vi didn't want to miss a single thing ever again.

It felt like all she did— miss things. Always stagnant, stuck in time forever, unable to move forward. 

Always expecting things to stay the same, to wait for her, too stuck in the past to see the present moving in front of her. Thinking, in years of wallowing in her own sameness, that she'd still be needed when she was put into motion again.

In reality, she was nothing but a kid's old wind-up toy. She only moved when propelled and she was only interesting for five seconds once she was.

It was like failing at the one purpose she'd been created for. 

But Jinx looked down at her kindly. A welcomed kindness Vi had never seen in her eyes— especially not since they'd turned bright magenta. She wasn't looking at her like she was a failure.

And yet, the look made her consider if her sister was better off without her. All of this progress had only been done in her absence. Jinx had only achieved peace once she had walked away from Vi. 

Selfishly, she didn't care. She wanted a family, her family, more than anything. Most of the time, she thought she wanted it more than she wanted to be alive.

And so, when Jinx's hands hovered around her, Vi's eyes sharpened, feeling like a predator ready to pounce. 

She grabbed onto her sister's hands, holding her in a vice grip.

From the outside, it might've looked like strength, but Vi knew herself well enough to recognize her own desperation. She'd never had the strength to pounce on anyone, not truly; it had never been what fueled her.

Vander always said she had a naivety that was unbecoming— with the implication that that was what made her tick, like it was a bad thing, like it reminded her of phantoms past. 

But then again, Vander used to cut her hair and tell her she had a good heart too, so maybe he'd lied. 

It sure felt like a lie when she saw the shocked look Jinx was giving her, still hovering above her, composed and regal in comparison to Vi's kneeling form— the difference was jarring. Nothing good was capable of causing that amount of pain.

Vi was gripping her hands so tightly, Jinx's arms started to shake with her. She couldn't rip her eyes away, even if she could barely see through the glassy tears. “Do you hate me?” 

It felt like begging for forgiveness, asking to be cleansed of her wrongdoings— it felt religious. A sinner begging their god.

Jinx did tell her she'd become the big, fat hero back when Vi was too hurt to remember that blood shouldn't betray blood.

Back then, the words felt like Jinx telling her to fuck off— she was announcing they weren't sisters; not anymore, hadn't been in a long time. The words felt razor sharp and Vi found herself wishing that she'd kept her mouth shut, that they both had.

Now, she wanted more than anything for Jinx to speak to her again, to hear her say anything at all even if it was insulting. It felt like she was right; Jinx was her hero, and she found she would rather hear her sister's disdain than not hear her voice at all.

Jinx just blinked, reeling back slightly. Vi's grip didn't falter, instead growing stronger.

The silence felt like penitence. It was the exact opposite of what she'd hoped for.

Do you hate me?

“I’m sorry.” She sobbed, desperate to fill in the quiet, clutching onto Jinx’s hands so tightly her knuckles went white. She didn't care; she feared letting go would make her vanish. 

She'd already been sentenced to silence, and no amount of vitriol would ever be worse. She almost hoped the grip would make Jinx mad enough to finally speak to her. She would've preferred it.

But nothing changed; Vi kept blubbering and Jinx kept letting her.

Yet, despite her stubborn silence, it didn’t take her sister long to kneel down in front of her. It felt strange; a reversal of their usual roles— but somehow, not unnatural. They hadn’t seen each other in years and somewhere along the way, they’d grown out of the rigidity of big sister and little sister. 

Then: finally, finally , Jinx spoke.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, sis.” She shushed, bringing her hands up to Vi’s face. “You don’t have to be sorry anymore.”

The words made no sense to her. They made her feel a bit dizzy. She wasn't even sure what they meant— didn't quite understand what she was apologizing for, if she was being forgiven.

They were supposed to lift a weight off her shoulders; finally hearing them was supposed to mean something to her. They were supposed to be important, somehow.

They weren't.

She still felt the same.

She was still Vi. 

But somehow, Jinx was accepting her. Years late and a thousand lifetimes after the ones they'd originally been born in, but she was accepting her. 

Vi never thought she'd need it so bad.

She cried harder, starting to gasp with it.

When she was a teenager, still bold and fiery, missing her parents like hell, Vander told her grief never got smaller, she just got bigger. It took up the same space it always had, she just had more space to move in. 

Back then, she'd wished more than anything that he was lying— that her grief shrunk as she grew. It made no sense at all that it wouldn't.

Now, she thought she understood what he meant.

Holding onto her sister felt like the day she'd lost her all over again.

“Hey, it’s fine. Don’t cry.” Jinx shushed, rubbing her thumbs over Vi's hands. Then, biting her lip, hesitant; words she hadn’t said in years. “You’re perfect.”

The words made Vi lunge forward, wrapping her arms around Jinx’s middle so strongly, she was convinced she’d never let her go. 

Hearing that felt bittersweet, comforting in a sick kind of way. They were as sickening as they were endearing. 

She knew perfectly well who was being quoted. Vi had been there when Silco had breathed out his final words, and she'd understood instantly they were meant to be a comfort for Jinx. 

It didn't take a genius to realise her sister was just as lost as she was— that she was parroting back the only comfort she'd ever been offered herself, even if it wasn't a particularly good one.

Begrudgingly, it was working, and Vi would've hated it a lot more had it not been for Jinx actually wanting to make her feel better. 

It made her think not everything was lost between them.

Are we still sisters?

Finally, she let her grip loosen, recognizing her hands were starting to hurt. In turn, Jinx just patted down Vi's hair, clearly unsure of what it was she was supposed to do.

Some part of Vi almost wanted to offer guidance even if she was the one being comforted. 

When they were little, she used to wing it. She'd tell Powder that everything would be fine and promise to catch her with no real idea of what she was doing. Back then, she'd been overconfident enough to believe the fantasy as much as Powder did.

Now, trying to guide Jinx just felt like a bold-faced lie. 

She leaned into her sister's touch. The gentleness she found in it made her cry harder.

Instantly, Jinx tensed, starting to grow frantic, and unsure. 

Vi couldn't help the shock of fear that ran through her. It was yet another thing she felt guilty for immediately, but she shied away from her sister's touch.

Except Jinx didn't pounce or scream or laugh the macabre sound she used to taunt her. Her eyes didn't gloss over or spark with manic. Instead, her stare grew sharper, more focused in her concern. It looked genuine, grounded. 

Vi's fear still shook her. She wasn't used to this version of her sister.

Jinx tilted her head, continuing to hold her sweetly, pouting her lips, searching for words.

When she finally spoke, Vi braced herself for an impact that never came. 

She didn't even realize Jinx was crying.

“Come on, sis,” she hiccuped, starting to choke on small gasps of her own, “you know I’m a sympathy crier.”

Somehow, Jinx's real words felt a thousand times worse than any wretched possibility she could've imagined.

Because Vi did know that— or she had known that, back when Jinx was Powder and Vi was just her big sister.  

Now, in a lifetime where Vi was a person of her own, and Jinx hadn't cried in front of her in years, it felt like a world-shattering revelation; doubly so when she realized the implication that she was crying for her. It, like many things in her life, did not feel real.

In a jolt of a relationship past, a pale ghost of her old self hanging over her, Vi found herself feeling fifteen again and giggling at her sister’s dramatism.

“You're such a big baby,” she laughed, though it came out more as a wet sniffle and made Jinx cry just a bit harder.

“No fair!” Jinx whined, now fully taking the chance to wrap her arms around Vi, holding her closer and tighter, closer to the relationship she remembered. “You know I got it from your wimpy ass!” 

“At least I can survive without chickenshit tricks,” Vi laughed wetly. 

At first, she was a bit uncertain about it, feeling Jinx freeze. Instantly, the familiar fear coupled with the old guilt crashed into her again, always hand in hand— all she ever did was fuck up. 

She remembered Vander telling her she had a good heart again. It didn't feel like it.

Yet somehow, Jinx had grown forgiving. Or maybe funnier. Or maybe she missed a real sisterhood as much as Vi did, thought of it as the inside joke it would've been in another lifetime, liked the needling when it had no heat behind it.

All she did was laugh. “That's rich coming from you, bitch mittens.”

“You’re such a little shit.” She scoffed, finally taking the chance to wrap her arms around Jinx's waist and hold on as tight as she wanted.

Vi felt like she could breathe again. 

She was home.

For a second, it almost made her believe in Janna the way she did when she was five years old and heard her father talk to her mother about her big, round belly and how he was scared it would kill her. 

Back then, she hadn’t understood what it meant but she knew that her mom always put her to sleep with gentle assurances of the miner’s goddess watching over her so she climbed in bed, got on her knees, and prayed.

She didn't want her mom to die. 

She hoped Janna didn't want her mom to die either.

Two months later she was in the cramped living room, holding a baby with huge blue eyes, as she tucked herself under her mother's arms.

Janna had been kind. 

It was the first time she’d believed in mercy, and believed in the goddess that granted it.

She was ten when she gave up on the idea altogether.

Maybe, past thirty, she’d take up the comfort of believing in a savior again. The reunion felt like the same kind of kindness that her mother's survival had.

But when she pulled back, trying to take in her sister’s face and found it entirely different, the illusion was shattered and Vi went back to living in a godless land. A life spent entirely alone was everything but merciful.

It was almost okay when Jinx smiled at her, clearly trying to be reassuring despite being wet-faced and flushed in a horrible shade of blotchy red. 

“You’ve gotten so big,” she chuckled, instantly feeling like one of the old patrons that said the same to her about a thousand times a week.

“Parenthood ages you, you know.” She giggled, shaking her head with a click of her tongue. “You should see Ekko; Little Man’s gonna go bald from stress.”

Vi just blinked, trying to process her sister’s words and the new, relaxed way she talked about everything all at once. None of it fit; a puzzle with missing pieces. The ache was back in full force. 

However, Ekko, ever the savior, jumped in with a bleary sigh right before Vi could have another meltdown.

“We’re not Isha’s parents, Jinx.”

He sounded equal parts resigned and fond, like they’d had this conversation a thousand times and he’d found it equally as amusing, or frustrating, every last one.

At least their relationship was something she could place. 

The voice still shook her. Only then did she realize two figures were standing at the door, watching them. 

She wondered if her fighting instinct had dissipated with the remains of the war or she’d simply been too caught up in bigger things.

Either way, she found herself struck immobile at the new sense of awareness.

She wanted to move.

She wanted to run to Ekko and give him another hug, pull him just as close and tight as Jinx and scold him for not writing a single letter, maybe congratulate him for actually managing to stay away. 

She wanted to assure him most of all, maybe through or after an earful, that he was still her brother, despite Jinx taking claim of her place as Vi’s sister.

She couldn’t pull away from the hug if she tried. 

She kept staring up at Ekko like she was seeing a ghost. She didn’t know why she’d thought he wouldn’t come back when he hadn’t given up on a single thing in his entire life— not when it came down to it. 

Jinx just continued bickering with him like this was normal for them. Vi realized it probably was.  

“Okay, then sisterhood has withered me into an old hag, that better?”

Ekko huffed, crossing his arms with an unimpressed look but somehow unable to hold back a small smirk; he looked like he was about to burst out laughing.

“I thought we agreed older-sister’s-boyfriend was hardly a title?”

Jinx narrowed her eyes pointedly. “You, Mister, are impossible to please.”

It was, Vi realized with a startling jolt, almost cheesy. 

“I’m just saying,” Ekko shrugged good-naturedly, though Vi could see the slight shake as he brought his shoulders back down; wondered if it was because of her. “If anything, you’re the one stressing years off my lifespan.”

At that, the smaller figure perched behind him, right outside the door like it was ready to bolt at any moment, let out a triumphant giggle. 

Vi registered the words for what felt like the second time.

Isha .

She started to wonder if ghosts were real or if she, like her sister, had started to see things. For a second, despite how solid Jinx was under her touch, she started to think she might’ve been right the first time, and they were all hallucinations. 

But then Ekko, who’d always been far more sane than she was, a person she could’ve never hallucinated with the bright blue tips that Jinxers always paraded around, turned, addressing the figure directly.

“Don’t act like you’re all that innocent either, bun.” He teased, ruffling their hair. “You’re almost as much of a menace as she is.”

The kid just stuck out her tongue.

Definitely Isha then.

Vi blinked, seeing the little kid’s face come to light. Her hair was longer, less blue but still dyed at the bottom, braided into two loose halves with soft curls falling right above them. Another face that had turned into something entirely different.

But she still had the same enormous yellow eyes that made her look like Powder. Definitely Isha.

They’d built a little family— or something akin to it— all along without her.

The rage almost came back. It would’ve swept over her in full force, really, had she not been too tired for her body to host it.

Instead, she felt an empty sort of peace.

She might not have been there, but at least her sister was taken care of. That was enough; it had to be.

When Ekko finally turned to her, met her eyes fully, looking at her through glassy tears, she could've said that. She could've said anything, really. Maybe told them how happy she was to see them.

Instead, all she could do was rasp out a dry, “you got my sister knocked up, huh?”

Ekko just grinned, taking it for the invitation it was because maybe he'd always understand the sisters better than anyone, and rushed down to hug her with a hearty laugh.

Soon, Vi was smothered between Jinx and Ekko, with her head on her sister's shoulders and Ekko's head resting against hers. And though softer, she somehow hadn't run out of tears to cry.

“For the record, neither of you are funny,” Ekko mumbled, smothered and muffled against Vi.

And it was reminiscent, really, of an old memory. One she hadn't touched in years, always finding it so painful to do so.

Just like then, it was a reunion, and looking back, it suddenly didn't hurt as much as it used to. 

Repeating it, Vi lifted her head, looking at Isha. The kid was squirming, unsurely, like she wasn't sure what to do amidst their hug. Vi grinned, squirreling her arm out of Jinx’s grasp and holding it out— an open space for the kid to run into.

Just like then, Isha crawled into the hug happily, slightly leaning towards Jinx. 

“Ish has grown up too, huh?”

“Mhm,” Jinx cooed proudly, “graduated from ankle-biter to demon all on her own!”

Predictably, Isha huffed moodily, and shuffled closer to Ekko's side. Vi laughed, reminded of having the same fights with her siblings when they were kids. It was nice to know that Jinx hadn't changed.

“I take it back. You're still a little brat.”

“It's what makes me so fun and lovable,” Jinx preened, finally pulling back, though all of them were still packed close together. 

“Not to mention annoying.” Ekko huffed.

And insufferable, Isha signed, nodding solemnly— it made her glad she'd picked up some sign language after the war. Vi choked on her own laugh, hoping she'd be allowed in on the joke soon too. She didn't dare add anything yet.

Jinx blatantly ignored them.

“So,” She smiled; a new, sunny thing Vi had never even imagined on her sister’s face, making her ache. She wondered why she’d never seen her look like that; if it was a product of her absence. “What happened to your shiny pig girl?”

Vi didn't have to ask to know who she was referring to. She didn't try to deny the pig part— really, she knew Jinx was being generous by even bothering to add the word girl . At least by her standards.

Still, her voice felt thick at the mention of her; she couldn't quite push the words out.

Instinctually, she wanted to say that it was complicated even if it wasn't at all. Really, the only reality where it was anything but a clean break was in Vi's fantasies and weakest moments. 

At least, she thought bitterly, Jinx would think the news was good. Ekko sure had, even if he'd tried to conceal it in some attempt at sympathy.

“We. We broke up.” 

She expected joy. Some over-the-top cheering and a poor taste joke about bootlickers and how that amount of money still wasn't worth her soul anyway.

She didn't expect her sister to look like she'd been slapped across the face. 

“I—” Jinx choked, sounding so confused and hurt that Vi started to worry she’d said the wrong thing, even if there was nothing else to say. “ What?”

She didn’t expect the look of utter heartbreak as her sister’s eyes welled up with tears again. It felt like it was all her fault.

“What's wrong?” She asked cautiously, instinctively leaning back, anticipating the rejection before it came.

But Jinx only leaned forward like she dreaded the distance between them as much as Vi did. Maybe they'd been just as sad as each other— what a ludicrous thought.

“I thought you two were doing the whole topsider marriage and being disgusting forever thing.”

She shrugged, though it felt stiff and unnatural. “Zaun is home.” 

At that, Jinx softened, beckoning her sister closer. 

Again, Ekko and Isha just watched in a hushed sense of solemnity. 

“Can’t believe you finally realized.” She huffed, no doubt trying to lighten the mood between them. 

It was half-working. It was putting Vi at ease, at least.

“I'm a bit slow, remember?”

“Mm,” Jinx hummed, “‘s’why someone else designed the bitch mittens for ya.”

She just huffed, laughing softly. “I can't believe you're never letting that go.”

“You started it.” Jinx pointed out, not even giving her a second to catch her breath before pulling her back into her all-too-familiar grief. “How long since you dumped her?”

Vi wrinkled her nose. “How do you know I dumped her?”

“Well, I'm hoping you did.” Jinx huffed indignantly, like the idea of Caitlyn dumping her was the ridiculous one. The notion of her sister's respect, even years since they last spoke, wrapped her in warmth.

“She did.” Ekko coughed, chiming in from behind her, somehow becoming more of a menace in his absence.

“Good.” Jinx nodded, ignoring Vi's glare, and looking back at her expectantly.

By then, Vi was old enough to know when she wasn't winning an argument.

“Like seven years?” She shrugged. “Something like that.” 

And if Vi thought her sister looked heartbroken before, it was because she'd never seen the absolutely shattered expression that distorted her face at the news. She recognized it well, though— the guilt in her eyes mirrored her own.

“Vi,” Jinx asked carefully, cupping her face gently. Looking after Isha had made her different. She wished she’d been there to see it. “Who’s been taking care of you, then?”

Her throat went dry; she swallowed, tilting her head unsurely. She didn’t think she even understood the question— what a ludicrous idea. “No one?”

Again, Jinx looked appalled. 

“Fuck you mean no one?” 

Again, Vi just shrugged helplessly, thinking about how she'd hardly been taking care of herself .

“It's not that big of a deal.” 

Jinx scoffed incredulously.

“I'm serious.” She insisted, feeling a lump build up in the back of her throat. “How is it a big deal?”

“Because I should've been there !” Jinx stressed, looking more frustrated by the second. Again, Vi didn't understand why.  

“This wasn't part of the plan. ”

“You faked your own death.” She deadpanned, unsure of what it was she was getting at.

“Because I thought you were better off without me!”

“How?!”

“I don't know! You were supposed to stay with Caitlyn and sleep on a bed of Zaunites’ hopes and dreams or something!”

It didn't quite feel like a jab, even if it sounded like one— at least, not directed at her.

“Well,” Vi deflated, “I didn't.” 

And it was a good thing— Vi reminded herself constantly. It was a good thing. It just got lonely sometimes, even if her conviction remained.

“I meant it, sis,” Jinx sighed, defeated. “I meant it when I said I'm always with you. I just didn't want to get in the way.” 

“You're my baby sister,” Vi repeated, falling forward into her embrace rather pathetically.

“I'm sorry.” 

And despite the grief that consumed her, despite the unreality of it all and the way she wanted to rewind time until everything was okay, she still found it laughable that she was apologizing now.

“Didn't think you knew the word.”

Jinx just squeezed her tighter.

In the end, it was Ekko who tried to break the tension, still close.“That's what I said too.” 

“You're the worst.” Jinx coughed, refusing to let go. “But I guess I'll stay for you, sis… since you need me and all…”

“Like you weren't staying anyway.” Ekko huffed, quickly backed by Isha signing sap .

“Aw, baby sis has gone soft.” Vi cooed, bringing her finger to her sister's cheek and laughing at the relief of knowing she had a family again.

“I'm not heartless !” Jinx squawked, slapping Vi's hand away. “And you clearly can't take care of yourself so someone has to.”

“So you do care.” 

“Actually, no, I’m leaving again.” Jinx deadpanned, looking at Vi like she might actually, but her sister wasn’t fooled— the vice grip on her arm was iron-tight.

Somehow, the remark didn't make any of them stir or pull. Instead, they found themselves in a strange sort of silence, maybe just taking in the moment or maybe something else entirely.

Vi wasn't sure she was entirely processing what was happening; wasn't sure if she believed it.

In the end, it was Ekko who broke the silence; she wondered if he knew what he was doing when it ended with the sisters alone. 

“Come on,” he sighed, more of a half-laugh than anything, “Sevika might’ve burnt down your bar by now.”

At the mention of the woman, Isha instantly shot up, grinning like she'd just heard the best news in the world. Vi thought about how they must've rushed behind her, probably not even processing who was being left in charge at first.

Isha turned to Ekko with a grin, grabbing his hand and shooting out of the room with a squeal.

She couldn't help but find it endearing.

Vi tilted her head, turning to her sister— a question she wasn't sure if Jinx could hear anymore.

She found herself at ease when she realized she could. 

“Sevika was basically our babysitter.” Jinx shrugged, clearly trying to come off indifferent but unable to hide her wicked grin at the mention of her. “The old Ogre was always on my ass.”

Vi expected to be more jealous than she was. She'd never liked Sevika, never got along with her or wanted her around her sister at all. Even now, pulling favors for each other and spending more time together than not, they'd be hard-pressed to admit they were friends at all.

Yet, despite her initial distaste, she was glad for Sevika— it was comforting to know that someone had taken care of her sister in her absence. It was more reassuring, still, to know that Isha loved her just as much. 

And, maybe, a smaller part of her actually liked Sevika in her own right, even if she’d never be caught dead admitting it. 

Vi huffed, pulling herself up, giving her sister an excuse to follow her down. It was nice to have her sister alone but Jinx deserved a reunion with her family too— hopefully, it was an announcement for times to come.

Chapter Text

ii.

It had been a little over a week since Vi had gotten everything she'd ever dreamed of: her sister back, a solid legacy to protect, and, however tentatively, a family that loved her.

And yet most of the time it didn't feel real at all; too good to be true.

She was half-convinced, more often than not, that it was all some big hallucination her brain conjured up in a sick attempt to comfort herself. Rather cruelly, she considered insanity running in the family. 

But most of the time, she'd turn, and her family was right there within reach, solid and unequivocally real, and Vi felt her lungs open up again. 

The cycle was constant as it was cruel— completely unrelenting, insistent on dragging her underwater, making her drown in her own unreasonably grief. It was almost as miserable as losing Powder had been in the first place, and Vi felt almost as guilty for it.

It was moments like that when she thought of Caitlyn's soft, sharp fingers dancing over her skin. 

You have nothing to feel guilty for, Violet , she'd whisper, feverishly sweet and tacky against her ear. You are perfect, darling, again and again until Vi fell apart, undone into melting molasses, only to repeat the soft affections against her opposite side.

She couldn't handle it then, and she couldn't handle it now. Not when she had every reason to feel guilty, every reason to drown in it. 

She had nothing but her guilt in the first place. She'd told Caitlyn that too, one of those nights— that if she'd let it go, she might find nothing was holding her together. 

That would probably be the thing to destroy her, after everything: the sound of her own bones clattering as they fell to the floor with the discovery that she was nothing more than them.

But those all felt like memories of some past life she shouldn't be remembering, a timeline that wasn't hers to dream about, and a reality that wasn't hers to own. Things only reserved for sleepless nights and stolen moments with herself, never to be spoken of aloud.

Unfortunately, those still occurred more often than she'd hoped. 

Nights were the worst when she couldn't convince her body that her sister was back, that everything was okay. 

Letting her guard down was an invitation for nightmares, basically begging to wake up with tears streaming down her face and the sound of her own gasps filling the room. Keeping it up was just synonymous with spending a night awake thinking about a lover she'd broken up with, only for a moral backbone she didn't actually have. 

Every day, she switched between which option sounded worse, and every night she ended up coming to the conclusion she'd chosen wrong. 

On the worst ones, she started to think that she really was crazy. Hallucinations, uncomfortably, weren't wholly new to her, even if she liked to pretend like every nighttime apparition was the first.

It was one of the worst nights when her sister finally confronted her, too sharp and somehow, too antithetically shy to say something before it.

Jinx had taken to sleeping in the same bed as her once she came back. Every night, at varying times every time, Jinx would crawl into Vi's bed and tuck herself against her side like they were little again. She always curled into herself, small on purpose, and let her braids brush against her sister's nose.

Nights were the only time Jinx wore braids nowadays. She said wearing them during the day was just begging for trouble, but Vi thought she just couldn't bear them anymore.

Still, somewhere between Piltover and Bilgewater, she'd started to take meticulous care of her hair, and groaned about how she couldn't just sleep with it down.

It was so out-of-character for her sister that, for a second, Vi considered the fact that she'd changed so much that she'd grown unrecognizable.

It had almost sent her into a spiral, firmly knocked her over, and shoved her into the grave of her own head, until Ekko had told her the real story. 

Apparently, he'd found out that Isha had cried and cried after she first saw Jinx's short hair. At first, she'd thought the little girl just didn't recognize her without the iconic braids, but after a rush of reassurances and pleas, Isha finally confessed to just missing Jinx's long hair— she used to sleep with it wrapped around herself and everything.

Isha loved Jinx's long hair, and Jinx loved Isha. The decision was a no-brainer.

Except her sister had learned compromise at some point, civility too, because she refused to wear it out in her old style again. Long hair, no braids, seemed to satisfy both of them. New hair for new memories and other stupid, cheesy shit.

It wasn't hard to piece together why Jinx hated her old style so much all of a sudden, why she insisted the new growth was that of a new woman.

Her name may have stayed the same, but it wasn't hard for Vi to realize that the Jinx she'd known was dead for good. 

Somehow, despite her hatred for that version of her sister, she was overcome with the sudden feeling of nausea when it finally clicked.

Even when she'd plait her hair for bed, she only ever did a single braid, the way their mom used to. The reminder just made her all the sadder. 

The whole ordeal felt like a funeral, held in solemn silence at the edge of Vi's mattress every night— a burial for the second time she'd lost a sister, never ending. She just hoped she'd never live to watch a third, she wasn't sure she could handle it.

But maybe she should've considered that those kinds of grim, somber thoughts weren't the best to fall asleep to, since she was woken up with a sheen layer of sweat all around her, and the sound of her own gasps. 

It wasn't the first time she woke up having a panic attack, and she knew it wouldn't be the last, but somehow, like every time prior, it felt like this one was the worst. 

It has been some other stupid nightmare of Caitlyn's disdain— her gun against Vi's side, her boot against her neck; living and dying a Piltie. Then, like a practiced dance, it morphed into Jinx's ragged boots, pressing down further, telling her how she'd failed, how she was dead because of her, joining the cemetery of Vi's reaping. 

A parade of dead bodies lay bare beside her— take care of Powder . Failure, as always. A past gripping onto her almost as tightly as she gripped onto it.  

The kind of thing that wouldn't let go of her, and she didn't want to let go of— the serpent eating its tail; Vi feeding her demise. 

As always, her sobbing was far too loud to feign ignorance when it finally woke her sister up, even if Vi was half-sure she was sleeping next to a dead body. She didn't know, however, that ghosts could be woken up by her noise. She'd been sleeping next to her sister's cadaver for far too long not to have realized sooner.

“Hey, sis,” Jinx yawned, pushing herself up and turning to Vi, “isn’t it a bit early to get your panties all up in a twist?”

This , however, was the first time the ghost had actually talked to her, reached out and addressed her directly, instead of staring with vacant, unforgiving blue-pink eyes. Usually, she only heard its voice in her sleep, and she didn't actually know if she preferred it that way.

In her stupor, the world around her was draped in a hazy mist that made Vi's eyes cloud over. Nothing felt real, and no matter how close it was, she couldn't touch it. She was only half-there half the time.

Her sister's ghost must be finite proof that she'd finally lost it. 

She wanted her dad. 

She missed Vander.

The ghost, the body, the cadaver, the apparition, whatever it was, that she called sister, started to get alarmed. It spoke louder, more insistently, more petulantly. Like a child. 

That was odd. It had never spoken to her like that before, not even in her dreams where baby Powder pleaded with her, small and desperate, asking for her big sister back.

This was wholly new. 

Vi shook her head, feeling panic grip her again. It wasn’t real. This wasn’t real. She’d gotten so desperate she’d grown delusional— wanted her sister to worry after her so badly, she'd conjured up the vision herself. It was getting rather pathetic, and she couldn't help but think Jinx would've laughed in her face. 

Powder hadn't been cruel, but her second sister had, and this was exactly the kind of whimpering wet dog situation that would've had her rolling over herself in maniacal glee. 

“Violet!” 

Now that , however, made her feel like she was being stabbed. She would've preferred the mocking cruelty a thousand times over. For a second, she was sure she'd be sick.

Jinx never called her that, and Powder didn't either. Only Caitlyn ever did, and Caitlyn hadn't looked her way in years— never would again.

Her sister had only said that the night Vi had abandoned her. It felt like the ghost knew that too, and she wondered if her own subconscious was so twisted that it wouldn't let her forget even that.

She couldn't help herself, instinctively, wounded like an animal snapping its jaws, she lunged forward, grabbed its wrist, desperate for it to stop. 

She expected it to go right through. She expected confirmation of her delirious state; a reminder that there was no way to right her wrongs when she'd buried them six feet under the ground. 

Except that didn't happen, and instead, Jinx's eyes widened, and she gripped Vis's wrist tightly upon contact. 

She didn’t know hallucinations could touch her. 

She gripped the ghost’s hand anyway, gasping when they didn’t go right through. She didn't know why she was still expecting them, too.

Slowly, almost as if a veil was being lifted from her eyes, Vi blinked, hazy memories of this being a blank slate returning to her. New beginnings she didn't deserve and chances at happiness she'd previously thrown away for scraps. 

She'd been nothing more than a dog beneath her owner, even now, long after Caitlyn had abandoned her. 

It made her wonder if Jinx would, too, shame burning instantly at the subversion of her role as a big sister. But she didn't really feel big at all. She didn't feel she was much of anything these days. 

“Hey!” Jinx insisted, snapping her fingers in front of Vi's face. “Fat hands! Bitch mittens! Useless homo!”

Somehow, that last one, so crude and characteristically Jinx , was what finally made her stumble and choke. She had to admit, annoying as she was, her sister was a little funny. 

“You can't just say stuff like that, ” she choked, still feeling hot tears burning her cheeks, this time closing in on a laugh instead. 

“Of course I can, I'm your baby sister.”

“Ugh, is it too late to rescind the title?”

“Ooh, rescind, big word.” She grinned.

“Yeah, topsiders used fancy words all the time.” Vi sighed, rubbing her face with the palm of her hand, seeing if she could get whatever hazy half-scene remained behind her eyes to disappear from her memories. “I guess Cait rubbed off on me.”

This time, she didn’t bother correcting herself. Maybe she just had to accept that Cait would always be Cait; no matter how much Vi scrubbed and picked at old wounds, it wouldn’t make them close cleanly.

At that, however, Jinx suddenly sobered up, looking pinched. “Is that what this is about? Officer Cupcake?”

Vi shrugged, too tired to bother denying or confirming her sister’s suspicions. “Sure.”

“It’s kind of a yes or no question, sis. Are you sure all that fighting didn’t give you brain damage? I told you the stupid bitch mittens didn’t keep anyone from bashing your skull in, you know.”

“No, Jinx, I haven’t fought in years,” she sighed, slow and long-suffering, her annoyance rolling off her clear as day. By the look on her sister’s face when Vi turned to her, it wasn’t hard to catch.

“Well, jeez, no need to be so grumpy about it. What’s got your panties in a twist then?”

“You haven’t changed at all, huh?” Vi snorted, fearing that if she let the sound linger on for too long, it’d turn into a sob. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Jinx blinked. “You know I’m smarter than you, right? Like, I may be crazy or whatever but there’s a reason my ‘chickenshit tricks’ work—” 

“Janna, would you let that go?” Vi groaned, pressing the heels of her palms further against her eyes, feeling her head start to throb. 

At that, Jinx just pushed herself up, leaning on her arm to better see her sister’s face. Vi felt the immediate sink in the mattress where her sister dug her elbow into.

“First of all, no. Secondly, the faster you ‘fess up, the faster we can get this shit over with.”

“Or you can just drop it,” Vi grumbled, not quite accepting that it was a losing battle, that despite how headstrong she was, her sister was the most stubborn person she'd ever met.

“I could,” the girl hummed, now fully awake, “but I won't.”

Eventually, hearing the finality in her sister's voice, Vi rolled over with a groan, knowing there was no fighting her when she got like that. 

Reluctantly, she might be able to admit to herself that she wanted to talk about it a little bit. It wasn't like Jinx had explained anything that happened, and there was only so much Vi could logically accept. Really, she was being very tranquil considering Jinx had killed people.

“Okay, fine. ” She groaned, feeling like she was getting some deep, dark, horrible secret pried out of her just from her willingness to talk. 

After a few moments of silence, probably the only grace her sister was going to offer her, Jinx finally sat up fully and looked at her tiredly. Like Vi was regularly the stubborn one with emotional dysregulation, and this was not something she'd witnessed by happenstance and pried out of her by force. 

“I thought fine was meant to be followed with more words. You know, like the answer to my question. Zaun can't have changed that much while I was gone.” 

“Ugh,” Vi grunted, turning her gaze to her sister's blue braid, spilling over and reaching her waist. 

Vi herself hadn't really changed her hair much since she and Caitlyn broke up, only just let it grow a bit longer around her neck, but even then, it barely reached past her shoulders. Jinx, however, was the spitting image of their mother; rather childishly, it made Vi jealous, and spiteful— how her sister had taken the memory of her when she disappeared.

Almost unconsciously, she brought her fingers to the back of her own hair, much thicker and coarser than her sister's, that had seemed to shine and soften like silk even in the worst conditions since they were little. 

It almost made her wonder if she'd be able to grow her hair out that long, too— if she'd like it, if it would make her feel closer to a woman that had died before she'd even gotten the chance to know Vi.

Some days, she thought that might be better. These days, knowing Vi was a sour disappointment, nothing like the young firecracker she'd been as a child and not at all like the regal Hound Vander had been. 

Just the thought of her mother seeing her now made her stomach twist into knots. 

“Vi,” Jinx sighed, slow and long-suffering like she was the one being forced to speak, “I meant it. I might be shit at taking care of anything that's not metal but I still meant it.”

“I know.” She sighed, unable to offer up anything else. Vi hadn't had that much experience being taken care of— really, the phrase had more to do with back alleys and unlawful fights than softness or affection ever had. 

“Okay so what's got you all fucked up then?”

“I'm like, the least fucked up person we know.” She snapped back, immediately and instinctively returning to some sisterly instinct of never agreeing with any assessment Jinx made of her personality.

Unfortunately, her sister had matured in their time apart, and just deadpanned. “That's Ekko.” 

“Close second.” 

“Eh, that's probably Isha.”

“I hate you.”

“Hate you more, what was the nightmare about?”

At that, Vi turned, narrowing her eyes in a glare. “I thought you didn't know what was wrong.”

“Then you really are stupid,” Jinx snorted. “But I'm feeling nice so.”

At last, Vi relented, figuring she was only talking herself into further embarrassment. Really, Jinx hadn't even given her a shovel, and yet she was finding a way to dig herself a grave.

“Was it that obvious?”

“Yes.” 

“This is your version of nice?”

“You should've seen Silco's.” She snorted.

“Did he ever hurt you?”

“No,” Jinx answered easily, like she didn't even have to think about it. Begrudgingly, it put Vi at ease.

“Is that where you learned to murder people?” 

“Wow, forward.” Jinx snorted, much less bothered by the jab than Vi initially expected. “But yeah, he wanted me in the family business or whatever, I guess.”

“So you murdered people?” Vi scoffed in disbelief, losing her grip on herself, unable to help it as she was overtaken by a familiar, churning sense of anger and shame.

Jinx just sighed coldly. “I was ten.”

The whole conversation was making Vi a little crazy.

“You killed—”

“You abandoned me.” Jinx snapped back, doubly as sharp and half as emotional as Vi was being.

“I—”

“You were only fifteen.”

This time, she couldn't help but notice how Jinx had added only . It sounded like the closest thing to forgiveness that her sister had ever offered her. 

She wanted to take it. Desperately so.

Almost as much as she wanted to know what happened to her baby sister. Even after all those years, it was that one thing she could never seem to let go. 

She pushed.

“What are you talking about?”

“It wasn’t fair, Vi,” Jinx growled. “The only crime we committed was being kids. ”

“That doesn't bring our dead back, Jinx.” Vi spat, more angry with herself than she was with her sister. Caitlyn always used to say she was projecting, but the thought just pissed her off more. 

“Wallowing about it doesn't either, sis.” 

“I can’t fix what happened if I just forget about it.”

“No, you can’t fix what happened, ever. Come on, sis, not even you’re that stupid.”

“Then what the hell am I supposed to do, Jinx?” She sighed, feeling the fight drain out of her at the same time she realized that, despite all the bickering and arguing, the bitterness and the anger, her sister was right. 

There was no denying that no one could bring back the dead, much less on hopes alone.

Still, it felt like giving up without a fight, all of it, and Vi, who’d never known peace, didn’t think she had something like that in her. She’d go down fighting, with a fist through her skull or a knife in her stomach, but never lying down, never quietly. It was in her nature, and everybody knew no one could teach an old dog new tricks.

“Nothing. Move forward.” Jinx huffed, blowing the stray hairs that were starting to fall out of her braid. “That’s what Ekko says anyway. And you know the boy savior’s always right.”

“Yeah, it’s annoying.” Vi nodded, almost absent-mindedly. “Can’t believe you listen to him, though.

“Yeah, well,” she shrugged, looser and more uninterested, tethering on bored, than Vi had ever seen her, “ever since Isha dropped into the picture, it’s like I put on glasses. I can see things clearer when she’s around.”

“That's why you're so different?”

“Everything's about her now.” Jinx shrugged, closing her eyes with a soft smile. Fully content, almost at peace. Vi's heart squeezed. 

She hummed, pulling herself to lie on her side, trying to ignore the panging ache in her chest at the thought of her baby sister having a baby of her own. She had never imagined everything would end like this. 

She didn't know if it was a good thing. It didn't feel like one, but Vi supposed that had more to do with the innate selfishness of wanting to hold loved ones close and unchanging than it did with any net good or bad.

“The kid really did a number on you, huh?” 

“It's like I said. Being with Isha felt like seeing things clearly for the first time. Everything's quieter with her around.”

“That's why you became a pacifist?” Vi choked, letting a little laugh curl around the words, though she knew it sounded more bitter than playful, and she just hoped Jinx wouldn't hold it against her. She hadn't quite learned to mince her words yet, even if they never took her anywhere good. 

Fortunately, her sister didn't seem to take offense, and instead, just snorted shortly. 

“Death— it was never real until I killed Isha.”

“You didn’t kill—”

“Save it.” Jinx snapped, seemingly angrier about any topic relating to her little sister than herself. “Point is, the kid changed the way I see everything . Even ghosts.”

Again, Vi’s anger reared its ugly head. She was almost lucky for it— she didn’t think there was anything else keeping her upright. “What, it was all a big joke to you before that?”

Still, her sister just looked tired. Resigned. Now, it was Vi that found herself wishing she’d fight back. “People don’t stay dead to me.”

“That doesn’t mean shit—”

“I know.” Jinx cut in, picking at the skin around her nails and chipping the polish, ruining the glossy pink color she’d been wearing. Vi frowned. “I’m just saying.”

“I don’t get it.” She insisted, more and more frustrated by how little she was grasping out of this whole situation. She felt like she was running in circles, living in a constant rut of her own creation. “How can you be so okay with all of this?”

“I’m not.” Jinx laughed. “But I have to take care of Isha. Hard to act crazy when you’ve got a little ankle-biter running around.”

Vi couldn’t help but giggle slightly. The idea of Jinx being responsible had never crossed her mind before she’d met Isha; the whole thing still felt somewhat foreign— a small miracle. 

“Never stopped me from getting into trouble.”

“Wow, finally admitting I’m better than you, sis?” Jinx taunted, but Vi could tell it was all jest. The mirth in her voice and the smile in her eyes were clear as day. 

Something in her unfurled; secure.

“Ironically, the nightmare was about people dying,” Vi admitted, more quietly than she would’ve liked. Somehow, she never got her voice fully solid around that word.

“Hm. Anyone I killed?”

“No.” 

“Huh.”

“It’s not that weird.”

“Kind of is, but who’s the crazy girl to judge.”

“You are way too comfortable with that.” She sighed.

“If you say so.” She shrugged with the same unsettling indifference that used to make her terrifying. “Wanna tell me who died then?”

“My relationship.” She muttered bitterly, not even having the energy to somehow still be hung up on it years later when it had ended before it even started lasting.

“Ugh, good riddance then.” 

“What happened to you being all soft and nice?”

“That was the shock of our reunion.” Jinx dismissed, waving her hand around easily. “Still got my usual personality, unfortunately.”

“At least you’re not boring.” She sighed, only for Jinx to grin back at her.

“Now you’re getting it. ‘S’what Ekko likes so much about me.”

“You and Ekko died too,” Vi muttered, coming to a point where she assumed her sister didn't give a fuck about social niceties anymore.

Fortunately, she was right, because Jinx only sat up straighter, craning over Vi in what she presumed was an attempt to get a good look at her face.

“I really didn't kill them then. Crazy.”

“Yeah. It was just a bullshit nightmare.” She choked, like her throat was prematurely closing up in anticipation of her next words. “And it was all my fault again. I just. I keep making the wrong call, sis.”

“We all make the wrong call sometimes, sis.” Jinx cooed, softer than she'd ever heard before. Isha just kept and kept on changing her, apparently.

“I’m not supposed to .” She groaned. “Every time I do, someone ends up dead, Jinx. I keep screwing up.” 

“You wanna talk to the terrorist about dead people?” She snorted. “Really?” 

“I don't know how you can live with this.” Vi whimpered. 

Finally, Jinx sighed, looking sympathetic and wholly sorry for Vi. If it were anyone else, she would've pushed her away, sick of their pity. But there wasn't a world where Vi could deny her sister's big, sad eyes. Not really. 

“Vi, I see people that aren't there, and they taunt me and tell me to kill people . I'm hardly living with shit.”

Instantly, her sister's words struck Vi like a bullet. She'd never quite understood who her sister yelled at in their past encounters or why she kept looking at her like a wounded animal when Vi insisted that whatever it was, it wasn't real . 

She'd pieced together the hallucinating part long ago— how couldn't she; she wasn't stupid. But still, hearing it from Jinx's mouth felt completely different than the reality of piecing it together for herself. Somehow, this made it a real ailment. 

“Is that…” she swallowed, feeling her throat itch at the idea of getting the words out, “is that what you meant when you said people don't stay dead to you?”

Jinx shrugged again, but her shoulders were stiff, and Vi noticed that rather than drop, she forced them down. She always did try to look more in control than she was. 

It used to make Vi sad when they were little. 

“Yeah. No one's ever dead if they're in your fucking ear telling you how much you suck. ” She hissed, voice getting louder and more agitated than before. 

Instinctively, Vi reached her hand out to her sister and squeezed, shocked by how open she was being, and hurt by her past ignorance at once.

“It was only after Isha that people died. She couldn't speak . So even if I saw her, she wasn't there. She was really gone. I think it hit me then.” 

Vi furrowed her brows. “What?” 

She shrugged again, eyes going glassy and vacant. 

“Everyone was actually, really gone. They were dead. Someone killed them— I .” Finally, she cut herself off and sighed, forcing a smile as she turned to her sister. “Anyway, like I said. I hardly live with it.”

Hesitantly, tentatively, Vi squeezed her sister's hand, worrying if anything too solid would somehow scare her off, make her crumble or disappear. Jinx just squeezed it in return. 

Vi was still trying to accept that she truly, really had her sister back. 

“Do you still see them?”

“Not as much.” Jinx huffed, pulling her knees closer to her. “Sometimes. I think I kind of get the whole dead people thing more now. Not everyone can talk to ghosts, I guess.”

“Yeah.” 

“It's okay. This is probably better.”

“Do you ever… miss them?” 

“What, my hallucinations?” Jinx giggled, though less mirthful than Vi was used to hearing from her. “Not really. I think it made it easier to kill people, but Ekko said I shouldn't do that anymore.”

“What,” Vi laughed, startled, “you'd do it if he didn't?”

“Nah,” Jinx grinned, “but it's fun to mess with him.” 

“I always knew you'd end up together.” Vi grinned, remembering her Janna-bestowed purpose as a big sister to tease Jinx about her love life to no end. 

Especially when she was dating the same boy the whole family had been teasing her about since they were children. Alas, in her family's wake, Vi would have to take the task up herself. 

“You thought we'd end up together when we were eight .” Jinx snarked.

“And you did.” She grinned, finally finding the courage to pull Jinx in by her shoulders and smother her against her. Shockingly, all the girl did was laugh as Vi messed up her hair and squeezed her waist.

“Okay, fat hands,” she giggled, half-heartedly wiggling in Vi's arms, “spill.”

“So affectionate,” Vi snorted. “There's nothing to say, though. Caitlyn and I broke up. Dad's dead, and there's nothing I can do about that now. I'm always gonna be afraid of you dying, Jinx.”

“And yet you tried to kill me,” she sighed mockingly, “you really are a masochist.”

“Ugh.” She groaned, burying her face in her sister's blue braid, and feeling her cackle against her. 

“You gotta let that shit go , sis.” Jinx sighed. “I know it's hard and you know fuck-all about letting go of anything, but you're driving yourself insane. I would know .”

“The crazy jokes are gonna stop being funny eventually,” Vi grumbled, choosing to ignore the feeling of her eyes welling up yet again. 

“But that day hasn't come yet.” Jinx yawned, finally letting up and pressing herself further against Vi. 

Usually, they did that when they were kids, and Powder was having a nightmare, so it was strange to find herself being the one who needed her sister's contact to ground her so badly. Still, it was appreciated, and Vi took the chance for what it was and curled into Jinx.

Times like these, she couldn't believe there was a version of her that was ready to give up on her sister, even if it had been nothing but a delusion. Even if Jinx never asked that of her, she thought she might have to pay penance for it forever. 

“I know you're being angsty again.” 

“I am a grown woman,” Vi grumbled back. Despite her protests, she didn’t even try to deny the fact that she was being angsty. Even if it did sound wholly ridiculous and juvenile, and she knew perfectly well that was exactly what Jinx was trying to invoke with the word.

She couldn't help it— unlike her loved ones, the past hardly stayed dead, and Vi’s stubborn mind would move into it permanently if it could. 

For once, she didn’t think it was her fault. She’d spent a significant part of her life locked in a cell, pulling at the bars, unable to get out. It was only natural that, forced into walls where time stayed unmoving, she’d remain unmoving as well. 

It was just what she was used to. 

Going forward, in contrast, seemed wholly unnatural. She wasn’t made for it: hardwired to linger. Yet, just like always, that meant forcing herself to be okay with being left behind, and no matter how hard she tried, that never worked once.

At some point, Ekko, or Isha, or someone else entirely, had taken Jinx’s hand and pulled her into the present, and past that, to the future. There was no space for Vi in someplace like that. All she’d do was drag everyone down.

Poor girl, rooted in place, living in a jail cell that had already been burned to the ground. Isn’t it all so sad?

Maybe that was the word for Vi: sad.

Because she still wanted, despite it. She wanted and wanted and wanted.

Yearning was in her blood, and it seemed that, no matter how many times she bled to death, it never seemed to refill clean. 

In truth, though, she never did try that hard to make it otherwise. She’d always been like that: all bark, no bite, an angry dog, long domesticated— bearing its fangs only because it had forgotten how to use them. No one wanted something so unnatural around. 

Or at least, Vi didn’t think so.

But her sister always did surprise her, and before she knew it, there was a hand on her cheek and big violet eyes looking straight at her, so bright she swore they glowed in the dark. Their origin was nauseating, but she couldn’t help but find the gaze itself comforting. She’d missed her sister down to her bones.

“Whatever it is you’re thinking, it can’t be so bad you can’t tell me.” She smiled sadly. “I’m crazier than you are, remember?”

She couldn’t help it; not when Jinx looked like Powder again, and not when Powder spoke to her so softly, so lovingly. Like in that moment, all was forgiven.

She couldn’t help it. 

“I missed you.” She croaked, feeling again like her sister had gone and grown up without her. “I just wanna be sisters again.”

“I’m always with you, remember?” Jinx replied immediately, like she didn’t even have to think about it. “Even when we’re worlds apart. Of course you’re my sister.”

“It’s just,” she sighed, feeling like she’d choke if she spoke too fast. “You were gone so long, and I thought. I don’t know, I just wanted my baby sister back.”

“I don’t know if I’m that girl anymore, Vi,” Jinx answered sadly, like for once, she truly, deeply regretted what she’d gone and become; like she cared more for Vi than she did herself. 

Stupidly, Vi realized that was not the first time Jinx had made that face. The realization felt like a punch in the throat. 

“You don’t have to be,” she breathed out, desperate for her to understand, to somehow magically pick up on every word swimming through her head that she couldn’t possibly begin to piece together. The idea of her sister not knowing, even now, how important she was, sounded like every one of her worst nightmares.

“Then I wanna be sisters again too.” She huffed, finally caving and pulling Vi into a hug. “I thought I’d made that clear already.”

“Yeah, well,” she laughed, a bit breathless, “you always say I’m dense as a rock.”

“Must be all the punching,” Jinx laughed, pulling her closer, letting her head rest in the nook between Vi’s shoulder and her chin. 

For the first time in probably the whole night, Vi felt herself relax, like she could breathe easy. 

Now, a newly established mantra in her head: one telling her no one was dead, and she could still hope for a family. That, she thought, would always be constant—she’d always need Jinx by her side, no matter how many timelines passed or how much they came to hate each other. Being apart hurts a thousand times than being beside each other, no matter what happened.

For once, Vi didn’t care that she was being overly dramatic. In the privacy of her own thoughts, she could replay every horrible memory she’d ever had, and find they weren’t as terrifying anymore, knowing there was a family around her holding her in place. 

If she was lucky, Isha and Ekko might be willing to give her another chance, too. She thought she could be a good aunt, given the chance. Even if she still didn’t quite know what Isha was to them.

That night, Jinx fell asleep curled into her sister’s body, exactly the way they did when they were kids, and Vi didn’t have a single nightmare.

And maybe that was why, for the first time in what felt like ages, she found herself sleeping straight through the remainder of the night. But Vi wouldn’t know.

Shockingly enough, whatever trick she was playing on herself seemed to charm her tenfold when she woke up. Nostalgia was one hell of a drug and apparently doubled as a muscle relaxant because the next morning, she found herself stretching easily and lazily like a cat, not a hint of soreness in sight.

That, too, was new. 

She had half a mind to kidnap her sister as a teddy bear if it meant she could wake up feeling so refreshed every morning. She hadn’t slept that well in years, and Vi worried she might have started losing sight of what a good night’s sleep truly entailed— especially considering her standards had never been very high in the first place.

Alas, she supposed there was no use in dwelling on depressing, medical shit she didn’t undrstand nor need when there was a perfectly asleep sister beside her she could annoy, instead.

After all, the night before, Jinx had told her she wanted to be sisters again, so what better way to show her that Vi wanted the same than by waking her up with her sister’s face in her ear. She was, in a way, reaping the fruits of their newfound relationship by attaining a personal alarm clock. 

At least that’s how Vi saw it as she grinned, leaning against Jinx’s head and half-screeching, half-yodling an off-tune melody in her sister’s ear announcing it was time to wake up.

In her defense, however, Jinx had really brought it upon herself by inventing the stupid jingle when she was five. Vi was doing nothing more than continuing the family tradition, and thus, keeping their parents' memory alive. 

The fact that she was, in a way, getting her own revenge was nothing more than collateral gain. 

One had to play the cards they were handed in Zaun, after all, and it really had been quite a while since she’d woken up in such a good mood.

Jinx would understand, surely.

“Vi, I know what I said, but i’m not above murder!” Jinx hissed, shooting up like a cornered animal, and flinging herself at her sister with full force.

Luckily, smart and agile as she was, in a one-on-one fight, Vi always won via brute strength alone, and quickly, she had Jinx squirming in a chokehold.

Unfortunately, for her though, Jinx was more than her scrawny arms and chickenshit tricks, and Vi’s decision of letting her hair grow, even if it was just slightly, came back to bite her in the ass in the form of her sisters long fingers pulling on her bangs. 

“Dammit,” she hissed, pushing her head forward, only for Jinx to snake her arms behind her neck, and pull on the back of her hair in an attempt to shove Vi off.

But while Vi hadn’t fought in a while, and the same clearly couldn’t be said for her sister if she returned from Bilgewater of all places, Jinx’s braid was easy bait as it had always been and Vi had no trouble letting one of her arms go to grab it and pull forward instead.

Predictably, Jinx screeched and turned to her side in an attempt to loosen the hold, all while twisting Vi towards her, stubbornly refusing to give up her grip, until she lost her balance and both sisters ended up lying on top of each other in a tangle of limbs. 

“Let go of me,” Jinx half-whined, half-giggled. She supposed some things never did change; they had always wrestled each other when Vi tried to drag Powder out of bed, even when she was still small and relatively docile.

“You let go first, brat,” Vi gritted back, feeling her poor scalp start to hurt. “That hold can’t be good for your wrist.”

“Oh, please, you just want me to lose.” Jinx shot back petulantly, face lying next to Vi’s shoulder.

“I mean, I clearly won already.” She laughed, moving her knee to lightly kick her sister from where she was lying on top of her.

“Hardly!” Jinx squawked, forcing her body into a little jump herself for the sole purpose of shoving Vi in the stomach because she was a brat. “Plus, you had a head start!”

“You lunged at me first!”

“It was self-defense!”

“From what?! Your alarm clock?!”

“From you trying to shatter my eardrums!” 

“Oh please,” Vi huffed, “your bombs must have done that already.”

“I’ll have you know I have perfect hearing.”

And really, Vi was a bit shocked to hear that. There was no way that her sister’s ears were actually okay after all those explosives. For a second, her grip loosened, body relaxing in shack, and the instinctive sisterly concern she could never get rid of.

“Really?”

Unfortunately, that was basically the same as letting her guard down and, before she knew it, Jinx had slipped away and was not effectively pinning her down.

“I win.” She grinned, and because Vi was feeling kind, she just rolled her eyes instead of shoving her off.

“No, seriously, how are your ears not like… destroyed?”

“Nah, they are.” Jinx grinned, finally letting go of her wrists and sitting up. “I can hear pretty okay in close range, but I made myself aids a while back.”

“How did I never notice?” Vi hissed, eyes widening in newfound concern about her sister somehow having yet another health issue she knew nothing about.

At that, Jinx hopped off Vi’s stomach and reached for the little nightstand in Vi’s room, only to pick up two shiny pieces of metal she’d somehow never noticed before, despite her sister apparently always wearing them around.

“Apparently, there’s only so many explosions Shimmer can fix.” She shrugged, putting them in carefully in each ear. 

Suddenly, she felt a bit guilty for howling in her poor sister’s face.

“They’re pretty comfy, though,” Jinx continued obliviously, “so most of the time I forget them. It’s a problem when I sleep since I’m technically supposed to take them out, but I can’t help it if I’m just that good.”

“Didn’t you say Isha made you more responsible?” Vi sighed, feeling yet another new worry about her sister pile up at the knowledge. She didn’t know much about the subject, but she’d distinctly heard some of her deaf patrons discuss needing to take them off regularly.

“Yeah, who do you think pesters me to take them off every night?” Jinx grinned.

“You’re impossible.” Vi groaned, laughing at the image of a small child running around and hounding her sister about her health.

“That’s what Ekko said, too.” Jinx cackled, acting like permanent hearing damage was way less of a big deal than Vi realistically thought it was.

But unfortunately, before Vi could give her an earful about how Little Man had always been the most sensible out of the family and he was nothing but absolutely right, she heard rushed footsteps down the hall and, in seconds, Isha was bursting through the room with her usual firecracker energy.

“Morning.” She signed, smiling happily and heading straight to Jinx’s bedside, almost involuntarily, like it was nothing more than muscle memory anymore.

Judging by her sister’s expectant face, Vi thought it might be.

“Good morning, Bunny.” Jinx grinned, pulling Isha onto her lap and fussing over her hair despite the girl squirming and wiggling in her arms. Still, Vi couldn't help but notice how Isha was smiling. 

“I'm not a kid.” She signed, still, rapid-fire and disgruntled like it would get Jinx to let her go any sooner. 

The thought almost made her laugh; if she didn't know better, she would almost think Isha didn't know Jinx at all. 

But clearly, by the way Jinx cackled and pulled the kid closer, probably squishing the living daylights out of her, the whole thing was a practiced dance. Nothing more than an elaborate, avoidant show of affection between sisters, or whatever it was they were to each other. Again, Vi was hit by the same remorseful sadness, reminding her that she couldn't know. 

At once, her previous good mood vanished. Despite last night’s promises, she’d rendered herself little more than a stranger, in the end.

“Aw, but you're so cute like a little bunny.” She squealed, delighting in the way Isha whined and harrumphed until she was released. Vi tried not to think about how those words mirrored her own, from years ago, feverish and delusional, believing in a better reality. “What do you want, though, kid?”

“Ekko made us breakfast.” She signed, looking at Jinx like this was all the explanation she needed— like it was absolutely imperative for her to know, Janna forbid that the both of them would have to eat alone.

Again, Vi was struck by the oddity of it all. No matter how much time passed, she couldn't seem to get used to the little domestic routine the three of them had fallen into. It mirrored a life with small children and three siblings flocking around her far too closely, and she didn't think she had a place in anything like that anymore. 

Except, maybe , by force or by chance, Isha had decided she did. And Jinx would never turn away the girl, no matter how much pride she claimed to have, and no matter how much she squawked and grumbled about stupidity. 

Maybe she did have a place because by the time Isha turned to her, cheeks hot in mock anger, she signed to Vi directly, like she was counting with her too, Jinx or not. 

“Ekko made meat and eggs, so you should come quick.” Then, after a short, considering pause, she decisively added, “so they don't get cold and gross.”

Vi couldn't help but snort at the familiar sense of stubbornness. They might not have been close or familiar to each other, but it felt like a do-over: a chance to watch Powder grow up all over again. This time, if her sister had been happier. 

She was definitely Jinx's. 

“Okay, okay, we'll be right down, don't pop a blood vessel.” 

Seemingly satisfied, Isha nodded, turning to Jinx one last time, and looking her up and down, almost as if inspecting her. 

Eventually, her eyes zeroed in on her sister’s hands. Vi couldn’t help but look too, finding the tips of her fingers dried and bloodied, along with her chipped nail polish. Instantly, a pang of guilt hit her. She didn’t dare open her mouth.

Isha, however, had no such qualms and started signing angrily. “I painted them two days ago.”

“Yeah, sorry, Bunny, me and sissy over here had a late night talk. Guess I got stressed.”

“I’ll paint them again later.” Then, after an almost shy pause, she added, “If you want.”

“Of course I want you to.” Jinx grinned, ruffling her hair again. “It’s been two days since we’ve done shit like this together— that’s like, forever.”

Again, Isha just huffed, smiling softly, almost like she couldn’t help herself, and ran straight down, presumably to what Vi assumed was Ekko's much more preferable company. 

She couldn't help but laugh a little at the way she still rushed down the stairs like a child; always impatient to get wherever she was going, no matter where it was. Not to mention the way she’d instantly deflated and perked up when she saw Jinx’s ruined manicure. It all felt so very normal.

She wondered if that would be the kind of childish angst she would've had with Jinx, had she stuck around. 

Alas, those thoughts only hurt, and she was in a better mood than she had been in weeks, so desperately, she searched for something else to latch onto. Anything but further reminders of the life she'd run away from. 

Finally, she settled on something she'd been curious about since the beginning, but, for some stupid reason, too shy to ask about. After their talk the previous night, though, Vi didn't think it would be pushing it anymore. Mostly because it never was— the whole reason she'd kept quiet so long had been her own fault for walking on eggshells around Jinx. 

“Bunny?” 

“Hm?” Jinx turned, blinking at Vi as if still half-asleep and processing until it clicked. “Oh yeah, remember the stuffed rabbit we had as kids? Isha kind of reminds me of it.”

“What?” Vi snorted. “Tiny?”

Jinx just shook her head, grinning. “Precious.” 

Vi didn't know what she was expecting.

“Oh.” 

Somehow, it wasn't that.

The words still made her feel like something was settling into her, melting warm and falling solid. A new weight around her head, on the floor of her belly, something new and heavy. 

Grounding. A reminder she was alive, and a reminder she had something to live for.

She didn't even realize she'd become so empty that the weightlessness had untethered her. The new warmth around inside her ribs made her feel like she was still alive. 

Having a family again made her feel like she was real, and heartbreaking as it was, she found herself liking it.

Chapter Text

iii.

It had been around a year since Jinx and Ekko had come back, and Vi was… okay. 

That's the word she chose to use, anyway. 

It was a good word. 

It was lackluster, easily swayed, and kind of underwhelming. Just like she was. But it wasn't bad . It didn't imply bad things were happening, and she was trying to stay positive. Mostly, at least. 

But of course, she would always still be Vi , and when something burrowed inside her, it would use the space until she passed, and then use the caved crevices between her bones as the altar to die itself. 

So she was doing just okay . 

Ekko said it was progress. Jinx said she was being a drama queen. Isha didn't say much to Vi at all. 

Still, it was better than letting it fester entirely, at least now she said it aloud, and that was good enough for her. Better than she'd had in years, probably the best she'd have in her life. 

So all in all, she was in a pretty good mood the day she ran into Caitlyn at the market on the bridge.

That was, of course, until she ran into Caitlyn at the market. 

Right between the cabbages and the tomatoes, where Vi was carefully inspecting the food, knowing that just because they had food, it didn't mean it was good. Still, it was progress, and poor Sevika looked like she was about to kill herself whenever someone brought up the Council, so she kept her mouth shut and inspected the vegetables carefully. 

Only the best for The Last Drop after all. That included the best food she could manage to make— she might've been unable to learn much, but prison had been years ago, and she had to force herself into an adult eventually. 

With time, she even discovered she actually enjoyed cooking. It was one of her vices, and according to Ekko’s smart mouth, the only healthy one. 

Vi didn't really care. 

As much as she'd all but given up fighting, her alcohol consumption had hardly dwindled, and she didn't think Ekko was a marker for anything healthy . They had all grown up the same, at the end of the day. 

But cooking was good. She liked it. It was relaxing, a nice thing to do with her hands that didn't make everybody she loved miserable and didn't make her a show pony. 

A win in her books and her wallet. 

After that, The Last Drop had become one of the better places in Zaun— a symbol of unity, this time. Just like it had been in Vander's days, but different. Peaceful in a demanding kind of way: a glimpse into the future they were working for but hadn't quite gotten yet. 

Ekko said it must've looked like the early stages of a world where everything panned out. Vi wasn't fully sure what he was trying to say, but she liked the idea of it. 

It was hardly anything fancy, in the first place, and Vi refused to sell anything but bar food. Still, it even attracted the odd Piltie, pulled everyone together under greasy burgers and semi-fresh vegetables, and that was more than the entire Undercity put together could've ever said.

Part of it was, of course, how picky she was about the foods she bought. It was all fresher now, needed to be drowned in spices less, and that made it a novelty. Most Zaunites still couldn't afford to eat at Piltie establishments, and though Vi loved the way her people cooked, she liked to offer a middle point.

It was ironic. She thought if her younger self could've seen her, she might have punched her right in the face. Vi wouldn't hit back.

But it was nice. She was okay. She was good if she stretched it the tiniest bit. 

And anyway, it didn't matter because she had no time to get lost in her thoughts while Isha was wandering around somewhere close by. 

Jinx was tinkering away at some project or another back at the base, and Ekko had jumped right back into the kind of work he usually did with the Firelights, so Isha had been enrolled in a state-mandated school, and since it was a weekend, that meant she was on Vi duty. Because they had to be realistic about who was keeping an eye on whom, apparently.

She'd recently turned sixteen, anyhow, so she didn't exactly need supervision. Vi, however, had made it past thirty with not a modicum of self-preservation. Meaning Isha was on Vi duty, which on Saturdays meant going to the market to prepare for the bar. 

Given it was full to the absolute brim, Vi still asked her to stay close, and she only half-listened, kind of like a stray cat. Most of the time, she let her. Ishw had a way of finding herself in a crowd, and so far, she hadn't gotten lost once, so Vi didn't really mind.

Until, of course, she was face to face with her ex-girlfriend, and promptly regretted every time she'd let Isha run off without her in crowded places. 

The universe, Janna, was playing with her; cat and mouse with Vi's sanity, to see what it would take for her to snap.

This , she had to admit, was cutting it pretty close. 

Because, sure, the market was crowded and overflowing with all kinds of people from all over the sister cities. It was bustling with vendors to the point that even Demacians and Ionians set up their stalls, and screamed into the air about the wonderful goods of foreign lands. It was natural for there to be people considered higher up in politics. 

Hell, even Sevika accompanied her sometimes, if Isha begged hard enough— the woman had never quite learned how to say no to her.

Still, she hadn't expected the damn Sheriff of Piltover to be there too. Rather acidly, she was half-sure she must've had help, people like Vi, to do that kind of shit for them. 

So when she heard a voice behind her, sweet in the golden, sticky way honey was, dripping on her skin and never washing off completely, she damn near had a stroke.  

“Violet?” 

Instantly, she stiffened. The voice was unmistakable. 

Caitlyn still talked in the same pristine way she always had, with the same sharp clarity behind every one of her words, like she was trying to make every sentence count, not scared of taking longer for it, of stretching out a vowel. The kind of person who knew that when she talked, people listened. 

It was, unfortunately, just as gripping as it had always been. That, she thought, might never change.

“Caitlyn,” she coughed, nearly tripping over herself at the sound of the woman’s voice.

Because what the fuck was she supposed to do? What was either of them supposed to do when they hadn’t seen each other in years, and Cait was probably all too happy forgetting about the stupid sump rat she’d made the mistake of falling for? When Vi had her sister back, and wouldn’t trade her for the world—not anymore, not after losing her twice.

There was nothing but empty promises and bloodied water under the bridge between them at that point. Vi could hardly even say if she’d forgiven Cait or not, refused to think about it, and Caitlyn must still think Vi was incorrigibly, wholly Undercity. Now more than ever. 

Finding her now, here at the market when she was supposed to be taking care of her sister’s kid, felt like getting everything she'd ever asked for and realizing it was all a ruse. It was like every time she'd gotten down on her knees, feeling her own bones dig into her, and prayed for something sacrilegious— never meant to happen. 

There was nothing here for Vi.

Both of them stayed silent. Just looking at each other.

Maybe taking each other in. 

That seemed almost like an afterthought to Vi, but she supposed Caitlyn was different these days. 

She wasn’t wearing an eyepatch anymore; instead, it was replaced with a prosthetic. Bright blue in the same shade as Cait’s other eye, hyperrealistic in true Piltie fashion, the thing was basically branded with it. 

It looked good on her. Vi had to bite her tongue, hold herself back— didn’t tell her how she was still beautiful because that was stupid.

Her hair was different too, entirely so in a way Vi never quite expected from someone as practical as Caitlyn, but she’d always cared a lot about her appearance, despite her no-nonsense persona. It was still in the same shade of regal, deep blue, pin-straight and framing her face like a halo. 

Now, though, it was long, cascading down her back in painted strokes of a life lived without her. A reminder that Vi hadn’t been there to see any of it; it was just proof of the time they’d spent apart, and the time they’d never spend together.  

She wanted to reach out, touch it, see if the shadows down her waist actually were her hair, and if it was still as silky smooth as she remembered it.

Vi was a creature of habit, and longing was tattooed into her skin, mixed with her blood in this ever-miserable state she kept herself in for absolutely no reason but that of her own grief.

It was stupid.

Caitlyn hadn’t changed a single bit otherwise; nothing but the faint glow of age, yet again reminding Vi of the time they’d spent apart: of a life better lived without her.

In the end, she wasn’t the one to speak first. 

She just stood there, frozen, until Caitlyn cleared her throat and talked like there was nothing wrong. Like it hadn’t been a thousand years since they’d touched, and like nothing was different between them. The thought of her indifference burned.

“I trust you’ve been well,” she choked, and for a second, Vi thought she looked just as haunted as her.

“Yeah, ‘cause Zaun’s known for how well we do down there,” she snorted, unable to help herself, coming back with something quippy and sardonic, an acidity he’d always wondered where Jinx got from but never admitted to seeing in herself.

Well sounded like a practical joke.

“Oh,” she coughed, flushing red and flustered, almost making Vi feel bad for how quickly she’d lashed out, almost bringing back an old sense of guilt. “Well, I thought things were… better down there. With Sevika on the Council and the vents, and all.”

And just like that, all remorse Vi may have held, any doubt in her head, vanished at once. Age had only made her worse.

She hardened. “Still as clueless as ever, huh, Cupcake?”

Predictably, Cait bristled, just the same as Vi would, mean and angry— the reason they’d gotten along in the first place, the fiery persona she used to find so enchanting. 

Now, all she felt was dread.

“Hardly,” the woman scoffed, straightening into that regal way of carrying herself that made everyone around her want to shrink. “I gave up my seat at the Council.”

“Right,” Vi drawled, suddenly feeling cagey, and out of place; a fucking Piltie had done more for her own people than she ever had. It left her feeling sour. “Forgot that makes you the Patron Saint of Zaun, forgive me.”

“Violet, you’re being unfair,” Caitlyn sighed, dropping her arms to her sides with his lost, sad look that almost made her want to apologise.

“Hardly. What, you think one seat on the Council and suddenly we’re treated like Pilties? Grow up, Cupcake,” Vi spat, squaring her shoulders, and recoiling against the sound of the name on her tongue. 

Caitlyn stepped back, looking equal parts hurt and angry, bringing out that contagious sense of righteousness that had pulled her in at the beginning. 

“What do you want me to say, then?” She insisted, louder by the second, starting to lose the rigidity that held her up. “I tried my best, I made amends, and now what? We already broke up, Violet.”

“Don’t call me that,” she growled back, feeling a nostalgic sense of hatred boil up inside her, feeling seventeen again. “And what amends, huh? That half-assed crap you people call reparations? A single seat on your rigged Council? Be real, Caitlyn.”

“What more do you want me to lose, Vi?! That was my family’s entire legacy—”

And that, she thought, was exactly the moment, just under ten years too late, that Vi fell out of love with Caitlyn Kiramman. It felt like something always wound tight and steady inside her, snapped in half.

“Lose?!” She cried, truly feeling herself start to shake with the anger of it, the most emotion she’d felt since she lost Jinx. “What would you know about loss?”

“Your Jinx killed my mother —”

“Oh, grow up, Cupcake,” Vi retorted, feeling guilty for the hateful words before they even left her mouth, “your people killed my entire family.”

She wasn't being fair. She didn't want to.

“My people?!”

“Yes, Caitlyn! Your people! You still don’t fucking get it, do you?!” She yelled, now truly, fully making a big fucking scene. “You still return to your damn mansion with the giant garden you can mourn your mom in! I go to the fucking burned down warehouse where my family died, and pretend I can still see Vander’s body!”

“I hardly see how that’s my fault—”

“You can’t be serious,” Vi laughed, hollow and cold, unable to understand which one of them was actually going crazy; maybe whatever made her sister go insane was finally getting to her too. 

“It’s not about blame,” she huffed, pressing her arms together, and pulling her shoulders upright, more dignified than Vi had been in her life— a queen and a beggar, that’s what they looked like. Cait and Vi: purity and desperation.

“Yeah, ‘cause you can just stop gassing the fucking city, and suddenly everything’s forgiven, right. Sorry, I forgot.” She laughed bitterly, remembering her own acts against the city, choking her own people, using the gas Vander used to talk so solemnly about, with such hatred. She really was nothing more than a desperate mutt.

“Oh my God, Violet, you people gassed us right back!”

“Yeah, I forgot that retaliation after years of living under your boot makes us the bad guys,” she snarked, shaking her head, “I’ll be sure to tell my people we’re all stupid jackasses for that one. How could we, am I right? I mean obviously we criminals deserve that shit, anyway.” 

“Violet, you know that’s not what I meant,” she frowned, crossing her arms and gripping herself tighter, brow starting to crease in frustration. 

“Right, sorry; illiterate girl, remember?” 

“That’s not what illiterate means—” She snapped, cutting herself short suddenly, cheeks flaming bright red. Vi snorted, feeling cruel, dragging it out. “Anyway, I just meant that mistakes were made on both sides.” 

“Mistakes?!” Vi screeched, her voice cracking halfway, going shrill in her disbelief. She felt like she could cry. She was making a scene.

Caitlyn’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, Violet, mistakes. I was just trying to protect my people.”

“From what? From the starving people back home, the orphaned children you created, or my sister, who only ever attacked the Council? Huh? ‘Cause maybe you should reconsider who was being endangered.”

“The Grey—”

“Was used on us first,” Vi cut firmly, blood boiling, feeling like she was meeting an entirely new person, a complete stranger compared to the woman she’d fallen in love with. 

“I was consumed by grief, my mother was killed,” she defended, suddenly looking more hurt than she was angry. 

Despite herself, Vi understood. Instantly, she deflated, her own shoulders hiking up to her face. She was just tired.

“Yeah. Right,” she sighed, “I don’t know why I even bothered.”

“What do you want from me, then?” Caitlyn insisted, always pushing, always finding the spot that would make Vi crumble. “I changed, I was upset, and I did things I regret, but I fixed it.”

Vi really wished she had her younger self’s anger; it kept her upright, stopped her from falling apart, and gave her the fiery personality she was known for. 

But she supposed that was what Vander tried to tell her, all those years ago, with her needless fighting and hot head; all it ended up doing was burning her into ash.

There was no sense in fighting Caitlyn. Not when Vi wasn’t even sure what she wanted from it, and not when she was facing the woman with crimes she’d helped commit.

“I don’t know, Cait,” she shrugged, not even bothering to correct the slip-up. “I just think it’s ironic, is all. I mean, you talk about your ‘legacy’ like it’s sacred, and we don’t even have last names.”

“Violet, you know what I meant,” she huffed. “It was a sacrifice , and things are different now; I see things differently, I’m not that person anymore.”

And oh, those words made Vi feel like she was scream; she hated them so much, she hated people saying they changed, that they gained some kind of bullshit perspective she wasn’t privy too while she was left behind, still groveling in the past, wondering what she was so blind to. 

Why was she trying to convince her in the first place? Vi hated change, and she hated being expected to congratulate rich people for their strong stomachs when they watched her people die. 

“Well, I am,” she spat. “Dirt under your nails, remember?”

“You did promise me you’d never change, didn’t you?” Caitlyn smiled, soft and barely there. Changing moods so fast it gave her whiplash.

She looked a bit faraway then, and Vi wondered if she remembered that night as clearly as she did; if she also went over past words and choices and tried to pinpoint exactly what went wrong.

She would’ve asked had it not been for the fact that she didn’t want to know. 

There were some things better left unsaid, and it had taken Vi seven long years to learn that in prison. She had no desire to forget it now. Not when it could ruin the person she was trying so hard to become, or pretend she was, or wanted to be— it didn’t matter, because it didn’t fit any version of her.

She kept her mouth shut and looked away, silently looking for long blue braids in the crowd, hoping she could cut her losses and get the fuck out of there. 

She didn’t understand why she was entertaining any of this in the first place, why she’d felt the need to pick a fight, of all things.

The whole encounter, the loud bustle of the market, and the fresh air in the odd middle where Pilties and Zaunites mixed were starting to make her head spin.

Truly, Vi should’ve heeded Jinx’s usual advice and just slept in.

Hell, her sister was probably still passed out and snoring instead of actually building anything; stretched across the damned mattress like Vi had never been there in the first place, leaving a permanent indentation in a room that wasn’t even hers.  

Maybe she’d moved to Ekko’s bed sometime after Vi had left, but she always slept in other people’s space, and smiled too brightly for people to deny her.

Jinx always told everyone they should take a page out of her book themselves, but it had never truly sunk in how much more comfortable she must be. Vi kind of wished that was her.

The sun was shining far too hotly, though, announcing the beginning of summer, so Vi might just be getting heatstroke.

She kind of hated the whole day, and found herself missing Isha like she really was the one being babysat. Isha had that cutthroat attitude to her that you only ever achieved being a teenager in the Undercity, and Vi had lost it long ago. 

But Isha didn't appear, and Vi wasn't in bed. 

Instead, she was standing there, in the middle of the market, staring uncomfortably at a girl she'd had no contact with in years, still at a loss for words, what felt like an eternity later. 

Caitlyn almost sounded fond, but not quite, not like she did when they were together. And she was right, anyway; there was no denying the fact that Vi had promised to stay the same, that she had, in a way, kept it far after she was supposed to.

You did promise you'd never change, didn't you?

Vi didn’t think it was a compliment.

And so, she put her foot in her mouth and blurted out. “Yeah, Ekko says it’s unhealthy.”

“The Firelight leader?” Caitlyn blinked, still heavily involved with politics, and thus, heavily involved with Ekko.

Vi almost pointed out how she surely had to remember him, their reunion, how he was like a little brother to her— but it didn’t take long for her to realize there was no reason to; they hadn’t acted like much more than estranged friends when they’d met.

She nodded.

“Yes, he’s always been a rather mature boy.”

This time, Vi bit her tongue and didn’t point out how that wasn’t a good thing either, swallowed back a cynical remark, and smiled tensely. 

Now, Caitlyn looked equally as uncomfortable, and Vi assumed she wasn’t the only one taken aback by their little screaming match. 

It was finally sinking in. 

The whole thing was pointless, anyway; the past couldn’t be changed, and Vi’s humanity had already died against the butt of Caitlyn’s rifle, so really, there was nothing to talk about anymore.

After all, they’d both turned violent in their grief, and as much as she’d joked about it in childhood, she didn’t find it funny anymore. 

“Yeah, sure,” she shrugged, “someone had to be.”

Vi didn’t understand why it suddenly felt sad now— why the words felt heavy like lead on her tongue, numb and clumsy. She and Jinx had joked about it a thousand times; even Isha liked to tease him about being an old man. It had always been an inside joke in their little makeshift family.

Somehow, looking at Caitlyn’s perfect appearance and tired eyes, Vi didn’t find that funny anymore either.

Fuck, it really was way too early for her to feel this tired.

Again, she bemoaned the space she should’ve been occupying beside her sister, curled in bed and sleeping ‘til lunchtime. Even Ekko took Saturdays slow, and it was a family tradition for the four of them to spend the day goofing around together.

They were usually her favorite days, and this was never part of the plan. Still, she supposed it would be fine if she didn’t bring it up. She didn’t really want to talk about it anyway; she felt little more than numbness. Pretending it never happened would be basically like having a normal morning. 

And, thankfully, before either of them could say anything else, Vi felt something soft wrap around her neck as someone pulled her against them. 

She huffed, unable to help a small smile from forming on her face before turning to Isha. 

“Hey, kid, everything okay?”

The girl just nodded, moving her hands in a quick sign that only said go .

Vi clutched to the escape like a lifeline.

“The boss wants to leave,” she shrugged, feeling Isha's sharp eyes on her face, a type of scrutiny that only occurred under a child who had lost their innocence earlier than they were supposed to. It made Vi squirm with guilt and, again, she wondered why the hell she’d dragged herself into a fight unprompted.

At that, the teenager, more perceptive than anyone in her family had ever been, inheriting an abundance of awareness from their lack of it, tilted her head and shifted her sharp glare towards Caitlyn. 

The perfect excuse to pull Vi out of the grave she’d dug herself: she was the spitting image of her mother.

The same eclectic fashion sense, the same deceptive big eyes, and the same freckles that bloomed when they finally saw the sun. 

But most of all, despite the short chocolate waves she kept in short layers down to her shoulders, it was the braids. Two long strands down to her hips, dyed a bright shade of jinx blue.

Instantly, Caitlyn recoiled at the sight.

Vi felt a little cruel for finding it funny. 

It really wasn’t.

She still couldn’t help but duck her head with a cough.

“Well, then,” Caitlyn nodded, quickly averting their eyes, scanning their surroundings, “it was nice talking to you, Violet.”

With that, ever polite, she left, slow enough to come off as unbothered, shoulders held back, long hair swaying ever so slightly, but just rushed enough that Vi knew the encounter was equally as draining for her. Surprisingly, that didn’t make her feel much of anything.

She turned to Isha. “You got everything on the list?”

Grinning, Isha nodded, holding up a big paper bag that Vi was sure included shit they didn’t need, but wouldn’t dare try to deny her, so she just smiled and tilted her head towards the exit.

Luckily, their dynamic had always carried a kind of silence that Vi, at least, had always found comforting, and she found herself soaking up the peace as they walked towards the bridge, unsure if the air was getting thicker or if she was still paranoid about how tentative their progress really was.

Either way, she didn’t think of it long before Isha had slithered under her arm and effectively glued herself to Vi’s side. The kid had always been especially touchy and liked nuzzling into people like a housecat every chance she got. She'd picked up the habit from Jinx, and though Vi never admitted it, the touch was welcome and grounding.

This time, she thought Isha wasn’t doing it for her own comfort.

“Thanks, kid.”

The girl just grunted, offering a quick nod, and leaning even further into Vi's side, who just wrapped an arm around her shoulder as they walked.

They didn’t talk about it on the way home, and they didn’t talk about it when they got there either, just pretended nothing happened. Despite that, Isha clearly signed the words Sheriff and blue hair upon arrival, leaning against the bar and staring up at Ekko and Jinx, wrapped around each other as they tinkered away at something or other, clearly just having woken up. 

Still, they didn’t ask, and Vi didn’t tell.

When she acted a mess all week, they didn’t push either, and when she glared extra hard at the Enforcers, they just joined in scoffing when they passed.

But Vi was a horrible actress, and it was only for so long that everyone could keep pretending everything was fine. After all, Isha and Jinx may sleep at The Last Drop, but they had shit to do, and Ekko was still helping run the Firelights. They couldn’t keep hanging around her like she was a bomb about to go off.

So, eventually, after exactly a week of what Jinx called “Vi's repressed tomfoolery”, Ekko stared her down while they ate lunch, and Vi knew there was no getting out of it.

Sometimes, she really hated having siblings. 

“Wanna tell us what happened?” He sighed, eating his food with a solid ‘disappointed father’ glare that made her feel kind of sorry for Isha. 

“Or who happened?” Jinx added, smiling lightly, even if everyone knew perfectly well exactly what had happened, and why it sucked.

Isha was a gossip, after all. 

“What's there to tell?” Vi snorted, watching the girl duck, avoiding her eyes. “I ran into Sheriff Kiramman, we got into a screaming match, we left.”

“Descriptive as ever,” Ekko drawled, always having been absolutely terrible at hiding his concern behind a guise of snark; a kind of defensiveness almost akin to Jinx’s. 

Vi thought they were meant for each other, but Vi had also thought she was meant for Caitlyn, so rather derisively, she wasn’t sure how good her judgment was.

“Thanks, the topsiders loved me for my expressiveness.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Cupcake loved your expressiveness too,” Jinx snorted, continuing to pick at her food frankly insultingly, like Vi didn’t know every nitpick she could possibly have by heart.

“Ugh, I don’t wanna think about Vi’s sex life,” Ekko whined, making Isha choke on her food next to him, quickly sending him into a panicked spiral of patting her back and asking if she was okay, while Jinx glared to cover up how happy she looked at the whole scene. 

On her part, Isha just swatted them away and complained she wasn’t a baby anymore, even if neither of them had even met her as one. Still, she was smiling a little bit at the sight of Jinx’s teasing and Ekko’s desperate face.

For a second, Vi almost thought she’d get an out.

Unfortunately, her sister had seen her daughter get bombed, so she saw little danger in coughing at a piece of half-stale bread and turned to Vi with her usual sly grin. It was impossible to get anything past that girl when it came to her family. 

She was so different now that it almost felt like she was eating with a stranger sometimes, but then she smiled the big, toothy way Powder always did, and Vi went back to wanting to tell her everything there was to know about anything she asked.

Still, she took pride in her stubbornness and didn't budge. Even vulnerability was a calculated competition between them, and one she’d already lost one too many times.

“Jinx, stop looking at me like that,” she sighed, knowing she’d probably lose again.

“Like what?” Her sister blinked innocently, pouting in faux confusion, and leaning closer like she was coaxing Vi out of something, or caging her in. 

“Like you're about to shoot me.”

“I think that's just her face, Vi,” Ekko snorted, moving her attention back to her now that Isha got her coughing under control and levelled him with a proper unimpressed glare. 

“Stop defending her, Little Man.”

“How is saying that my face looks like I'm about to shoot people defending me ?!” Jinx squawked, bringing a heavy palm down against the table, and grumbling as they laughed around her. 

Isha, in particular, seemed to find the whole exchange hilarious and mimicked a little shooting motion with her fingers that Vi honestly found traumatizing, but her sister just huffed at. 

Then, she turned to Vi again, glaring like the whole ordeal was somehow her fault, “This isn't about me! Tell us what the fuck happened with Officer Cupcake.” 

“So much for giving her space,” Ekko snorted. 

“I'm not a child,” Vi groaned back, only serving to make Isha level her with a look so expressive, she knew what she meant even without signing. 

“Uh-uh,” Jinx tutted, wagging her finger in her face, “now you know how we feel.”

Vi didn't have to ask to know what they were referring to. 

“That’s different,” she huffed, leaning away, “I’m your big sister.”

“Oh, come on,” Jinx huffed, “Ekko started a whole cult by himself, I think we're just as mature as you are.”

“It’s not a cult, Jinx,” he sighed, sounding tired in a way that told Vi her sister had needled him about this a thousand times already.

It would’ve been funnier if it wasn’t so sad; if she had been able to be there.  

As it was, it felt a little like a punch in the stomach: being faced with the reality that the man she always promised was her little brother had raised himself, never expecting anything from her. The thought that she’d gotten sidetracked with Powder, and once she’d lost that, she’d given up on him, too.

The guilt felt like hot coals at the base of her stomach and made her squirm.

“Of course you can’t just admit it’s a cult,” Jinx argued, shaking her head like it was obvious.

“You and Ish literally live there,” Ekko pointed out, and when Vi looked up, though it was heavy, her heart fluttered slightly at the victorious expression he was making, so reminiscent of when they were kids and he managed to beat Powder at something in the old arcade.

“Like I would let my baby sister live in a cult!” She gasped, bringing her hand to her chest, and falling back dramatically.

At that, Isha finally saw the need to intervene, and Vi was hit with just how much the little girl had grown up to be like Mylo in his quieter, sweeter moments.

“I’m almost your age when you adopted me,” she signed, looking at the both of them like she just thought they were being dumb, and Vi couldn’t help but hunch forward, shaking with silent laughter in a mirror of how all of her siblings would’ve been like if she’d been there to see them through their moody adolescent phases.

“I was like two years older,” Jinx tutted, shaking her head like that was argument winning, and not all the more damning. 

Vi’s laughter just got louder. 

She really didn’t know what she was missing back when they'd been apart, she mused, watching them bicker and take jabs at each other. 

She’d always wanted her family back, yearned for it desperately, missed her sister like a piece of her own body, but she never quite let herself picture what it would look like. Fantasies were always hazier, painted golden with idealism that never truly happened, and just seemed like cheap plastic when she sat at the real lunch table with her real family as they fought and pushed each other through their sharp edges and unmeasured words.

It was better than anything she could’ve hoped for, and again, she was hit with the horrible feeling that she could’ve had it already, even if it wasn’t with Jinx and Isha.

She could’ve had it with Ekko.

She’d deprived him just as much as she’d deprived herself, and in the end, he wasn’t even raised by strangers but by his family’s ghosts. 

If Vi could go back, rewind, and do it all over again, she’d hold him closer, never let him out of her sight, and promise the only reason she hadn’t searched for him from the start was because she was so sure he was dead, too.

If Vi could go back, she’d do everything differently.

She’d go somewhere that only existed in her dreams, and hold Ekko and Jinx close to her body. They’d find Isha along the way— too interwoven into their dynamic to let it shift without her. Vi knew that no matter what happened, they'd fall into place every time.

She just wished that, this time, it had taken less heartache.

And maybe she’d been too withdrawn then, too immersed in her own world and her stupid grievances, because by the time she looked up again, tuned back with a hazy new sense of awareness, she heard Ekko and Jinx badly whisper amongst themselves as Isha signed bold and fast, not even bothering to try and match their conspiratory tone.

“See, now is when you ask,” Jinx murmured, giggling through her words like she found the whole situation hilarious, completely unsubtle. “She has that look. She’s thinking corny crap about us, so it’s the perfect time to pry. She can't say no.”

“Isn’t that a bit manipulative, Jinx?” Ekko giggled back, and despite his concerned words, Vi could clearly see the little shit was having just as much fun as she was. 

Unfortunately, before she could see the scene fully play out further, Isha unceremoniously slammed her elbow against Ekko’s side and tilted her head up towards her, grinning with sadistic pleasure.

“You know you two are full-grown adults, right?” Vi grinned, tilting her head when they finally met her eye.

“And yet you still act like we’re kids.”

“Aw, because you’ll always be my babies, Little Man,” Vi shot back, lowering her voice into something sickly sweet; the melted molasses Vander put in their milk to help them settle when they were kids.

Almost as if they remembered it too, tasted the same thick flavor at the base of their tongues, they softened, something vulnerable and unguarded that only showed up in the quieter moments at the bar. 

Nostalgia bound them together in its overly sweetened sadness, and even Isha, who didn't truly share any of it, having grown into someone ever-snarky, always teasing, too close to a mix between Jinx and Sevika to be anything but a menace, just smiled and looked down; like she wasn’t sure if she was included but wanted to be.

That wouldn’t do at all, Vi decided, leaning forward, reaching out, “you too, Ish. You’re my baby sister. Or my niece. Something like family, at least. Jinx is kinda weird.” 

And that seemed to do it, made the air settle, and allowed everyone to bask in the soft comfort of full stomachs and gentle reassurances.

“You’re not getting out of this that easy, you know,” Ekko murmured, softer and lower than he usually did, like he didn’t want to break the atmosphere but still with that inherent determination of his.

When they were little, it was nothing but a penchant for trouble, a way to fit in and to make Vi feel like she was aging a thousand times faster. 

Now, she didn’t find herself minding the line of questioning that much. Maybe because she knew what it was like to live without it.

“Fine,” she sighed. “I saw her at the market, and we talked. I guess it messed with me.”

“Yelled,” Isha corrected, more meekly than usual but not enough to stop her from interjecting, poking at Vi like she was starting to accept she could do it too. It made her wonder how much of the distance between them was intentional. Jinx always did say Isha was a chatty kid, after all.

“Okay, fine, we got into a screaming match,” Vi sighed.

That time, Isha didn’t correct her. She counted it as a form of snark in itself.

“I would've gotten into worse,” Jinx shrugged, grinning mischievously like the idea of causing a commotion was, in any way, a good thing. 

Ekko, of course, didn't let this slide, “Jinx.” 

“What?!” She squawked, “It's true. And this way sissy dearest doesn't feel like such a fuck-up. Also, I wasn't even there.”

“You're a terrible role model for Isha,” he snorted. 

Beside him, Isha just nodded, giggling a little herself, teasing Jinx in a way that reminded Vi they sometimes called each other sisters. 

“Eh, she's not doing so bad,” she interjected, shrugging, albeit a bit tensely. “Isha got me out of there unscathed, after all. She's a smart kid.”

“Yeah, but that's all her,” Jinx smiled, shaking her head and looking soft and adoring. She looked a little bit like Powder again. This time, Vi thought it was unmistakably motherly. 

Isha, as usual, perked up at the praise, and despite the slight pinkish hue at the tips of her ears, she smiled big and toothy. She looked younger, too. 

“You wouldn't have gotten into a fight with Caitlyn, anyway,” Ekko interjected, shaking his head with a sardonic quirk of his lips. “You've gone soft.” 

Vi wasn't sure if the particularly mean brand of humor was Jinx rubbing off on him or if, in her absence, there was something she'd missed— an unknowable core to his character she should've unearthed when she got out of prison. 

But it made no sense to get caught up on it, and thinking herself into circles never gave her anything good, much less clarity, so she found herself filing the fact away and enjoying how confident he'd gotten since they were young. 

She smiled, small and tight. “I don't know, I might've. She kind of pissed me off.”

“Ooh, finally! Welcome to the club,” Jinx giggled, clapping her hands together in short, manic spasms that made Vi shoot her an unimpressed glare. 

“Not like that, Jinx.”

Instantly, her sister bristled. “What's that supposed to mean?!”

“Probably that Vi didn't want to kill her,” Ekko shrugged.

“I don't want to kill her either,” Jinx whined. “I just… am a little fucked up, is all. Not like Officer Piltover was any better.”

“You're getting lazy with your nicknames,” he drawled, seemingly seeing no need to retort the first part of the sentence.

Vi, however, was fucking tired of beating around the bush and keeping things quiet. 

Vi had always been known, even when she was a kid, for saying the quiet part out loud. 

“Jinx, come on,” she sighed, “you tried to get me to shoot her.”

This time, she really should've shut up. 

“Since when is this about me?” The girl whined, squirming uncomfortably and averting Vi's eyes entirely. 

“Since right now, what the fuck, Jinx?”

Vi could see the exact moment that she gave up and gave in. 

“I thought you didn't love me, okay?!” Her sister snapped, an old sort of frantic look in her eyes that made both Ekko and Isha shoot up, tense. 

Vi, however, held her ground and stared at her sister until she continued, unyielding. She was tired of feeling like things were settling, getting figured out, and finding everyone was changing, hiding something, with no intention of letting her catch up.

“With Silco, love meant I was perfect no matter what, and I could do whatever I wanted. He'd shoot anyone right between the eyes if I asked,” she added, getting quieter by the second. “I just thought you didn't want me anymore.”

She should've said something kind. Something tactful , that made Jinx feel better or assured it was all in the past, because it was. There was nothing to be done about it anymore. 

Vi wanted, instinctively, to comfort. 

Instead, she blurted out her first thought, “Jinx, that's fucked up.”

“Yes, Vi,” she sighed, though her lips quirked upwards, just slightly, “that's kind of the point. My grudge against Caitlyn was stupid. I was too far gone. It's like I said, things didn't start to look clear until I got Isha.”

Again, the girl smiled bashfully, wiggling a little in her seat like there was still extra energy she needed to get out. Vi thought it made everyone relax, snap out of their taut anger— she seemed to have that effect on them.

“You can never make things easy, huh?” Ekko grinned again with that sharp, teasing tone that Vi almost thought would put Jinx even more on edge. It made her panic, a little bit, at the idea of the conversation going south when all of them were doing so well. 

But then, Jinx just grinned, leaning towards him with a new tone, flirtier, happier. Ekko seemed to have that effect on her, specifically.

“What would be the fun in that?” She grinned, finally moving enough to give him a quick peck on the lips before turning back to Vi. 

Isha made a loud gagging sound beside them, and instantly, Vi joined in, letting out a loud ew . 

“Hands off, Little Man,” she growled, only half-joking, knowing that no matter what, Jinx was always someone she'd want to protect. 

Ekko, however, didn't seem intimidated in the slightest. 

“Yeah, yeah, you're just mad you're single.”

And then, because they were taunting her, he curled his fingers under Jinx's chin, held her gently, and kissed her again. It was just as short and chaste as the first one, but Vi felt kind of like she was watching someone being gutted in front of her.

“Ugh, you guys suck,” she groaned, making Isha nod along, wrinkling her nose and glaring like they'd personally offended her too. 

“Sure we do,” Jinx giggled, finally pulling away, “but back to your little crisis. I sucked, Zaun sucked, everything sucked. But Topside was even worse.”

And because Vi had never left well enough alone, she asked the same thing for the thousandth time, “Is that why you left?”

At that, Jinx pursed her lips, tensing back up and looking at her sister through tired, half-lidded eyes. Vi didn't budge. 

“I guess,” she sighed. “I was just so convinced I was cursed or something. I didn't wanna screw you over even more, and Isha needed a change of scenery, anyway.”

“Your solution to thinking you were cursed was walking off?”

“I was trying to protect you, okay?!” She snapped. “It wasn't easy for me either. I just wanted to break this stupid cycle we were in.”

“What?”

“Yeah, you know, this cat and mouse where we fight and pretend we aren't going easy on each other just to do it all over again.” She shrugged, “I'm trouble, sis. I just wanted to get away, I couldn't kill you and Ekko too.”

At that, Vi found herself speechless. She didn't know what she was supposed to say. She'd missed her sister immensely, and she barely understood what she was talking about, but she'd missed her so bad sometimes it felt like she couldn't breathe with the memory of it.

In hindsight, Vi should've taken the peace for what it was and not pushed, but she’d known that already.

“Curses are stupid,” she choked out.

“Yeah, that's why I'm back, dummy!” Jinx announced, perking back up, losing that absent expression that made Vi's stomach twist. Finally, she felt like she could breathe easy again.

“And because I begged,” Isha added seriously, though her lips were twitching and her eyes were bright. She recognized it as the face she made when she was laughing at them— the little scrawny thing she remembered had grown into a little minx, but Vi was grateful for the way she always lightened the mood.

“Point is we're here,” Ekko huffed, ever the peacemaker, looking at both of them fondly, like they were his. 

Again, Vi thought they deserved each other; this time, with more conviction. 

“I guess seeing Cait’s just got me in a funk,” she sighed, rubbing her hand against her face, wishing she could forget all about it and bask in the nice ambiance like anyone else would've.

“Yeah, seeing her ugly mug would get me in a funk too—”

“Jinx!” Ekko repeated, trying to sound disapproving but laughing incredulously the whole way through, looking almost happy. Vi supposed it was fair, given he was required to work with arrogant politicians all day. She was grateful she got to work in the rebuilt bar instead. 

“Your flirting is disgusting,” Isha signed, mostly just watching the whole ordeal from the sidelines but clearly feeling the need to periodically make her disapproval known.

“Ugh, fine,” Jinx groaned, pulling back from Ekko, pouting as she rested her chin against her hand. “Anyone else want to talk about their tragic life?” 

Vi really couldn't let herself have nice things.

She did.  

“Ekko, I'm sorry,” she blurted out, about seven years too late, but supposing it was better late than never.

The man just blinked, staring back at her, looking dumbfounded. “What?”

“I shouldn't have sidetracked you when I got out of jail,” she insisted, feeling a bit desperate; to be understood or forgiven, she wasn't sure. 

He softened, “Vi, I could've reached out too.”

“I'm the oldest,” she insisted miserably, knowing that Ekko had gone and grown up without her; that she was being stupid and childish. It has always been a stupid argument. 

Ekko, however, seemed to humor her and shook his head, smiling like he was still the little man who followed her everywhere like a lost chick. 

“Well, you're here now, aren't you?”

“Like you'd be able to get rid of me again,” she smiled, small but brighter than before. 

“That's enough for me,” he assured. 

Instantly, Vi was across the table, standing beside Ekko, pulling him up from his chair and into a hug. And he wasn't a kid anymore, hadn't been for a long while, but he still relaxed into her embrace like he was one, and Vi thought it was enough for her, too. 

It didn't take long for Jinx to slither in too, holding an arm out, leaving her side open for Isha to press against her, wrapping her around Ekko and Vi— the four of them in an uncomfortable hug reminiscent of something from years past. 

Something like family.