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In all truthfulness, Ekko knows he is a man who’s stalling, and Ekko never stalls for anything in his life. Not after his parents’ death, not after Benzo’s, and definitely not after Powder’s. Progress was this city’s motto, and in turn Ekko’s was to get up, get moving. You’re fine. There are always things to do. It gets his mind to keep ticking on.
Here, now, in this quiet room after the war, there isn’t very much to do.
He almost doesn’t want to wake her. She has her back turned on him, her shoulders jutting out under the thin curtain of hair falling all demurely over her nape, and he almost—he wants to lay back down and settle his arm there. Over her, where he could keep her safe. Like the gaping edge of a puzzle longing to be solved. But he knows that if he doesn’t get up and moving now, he never will, and she never will, either, and he knows it’ll kill her.
So.
He’s running his knuckles over her spine, enough pressure to make her shudder and startle herself awake from what restless sleep she’d manage to get. “Hey,” he murmurs when she chirps in complaint at the intrusion. “Sorry.”
Jinx grumbles, shoves him away, and rolls back over the sheets.
“It’s ten,” he says, like it means anything. “Quite late to be sleeping.”
“Mmm.”
“C’mon,” he thinks of something to coax her to wake up, get out of bed, get moving. “If you have a shower now, brunch will be ready by the time you get out.”
Ekko peeks over her shoulder slightly to look at her expression—her eyes are still closed, but her nose has slightly scrunched up in distaste now. “The fuck’s brunch?”
He smiles. “Fancy way to say half breakfast, half lunch.”
“So breakfast when you forgot to have breakfast and it’s already too late.”
“Mmhm,” he shrugs. “Exactly what you are.”
Jinx just grumbles again.
“Come ooon… ” he tugs on her arm, now. “You’ve gotta get up.”
Nothing.
“Jinx. You need to get up now or you’re never going to.”
That rouses something out of her. She stills, for a while, her frames going taut as if she’s bristling. Ekko opens his mouth and closes it again—afraid. And then Jinx rises up, truly does wakes up from her side of the bed, shrugging off the sheets off her waist and slinging her legs off the edge. She doesn’t say a thing, doesn’t turn around the slightest to even spare him a glance, and Ekko thought, fair— until she throws her pillow square at his face and swiftly makes a beeline for the bathroom.
The mansion feels emptier than it's ever been since her mother’s death, which Caitlyn didn’t think was possible, given the five foot six butch permanently inhabiting the left side of her bed now—but it somehow is.
Vi is exactly that. Quiet. Empty. Her previous cocky, sweet-charming demeanor had faded into her usual dreamy, far-focused gaze, in which Caitlyn keeps having to gently pull her out of multiple times a day. She’d tried everything—encouraged her to read books, any book she’d like, play the various instruments laying around to collect dust across the corners of the house, take up boxing again—all which seemed to be taken half-enthusiastically by Vi once or twice before she drops it, as if she’d only done it for the sake of pleasing her. Which—Caitlyn didn’t want it to be. Caitlyn wants to help, wants to nurse her back into the girl she used to know the way Vi had so patiently done with her. It’s just that the girl she met in Stillwater isn’t there anymore, and they both know it.
Everyone tells her to give it time, so Caitlyn does. Tries to, anyway—but there is one thing that Caitlyn’ isn’t willing to wait for even when Vi does all her might to stall it, and it’s that Violet needs to eat.
It starts with breakfast. Meals, thrice a day if she’s particularly lucky. Vi had stopped truly eating ever since the battle—ever since she’d lost Jinx—and Caitlyn knows the nightmares persists, so she doesn’t sleep, either. She just stood there, quietly, in the corners of this house, as if she was afraid of taking the space that Caitlyn is begging for her to take. Just take it. Caitlyn would give the whole world for her to take if she’d asked for it, but Vi isn’t even willing to eat more than a few pieces of toast on good mornings.
So, naturally, Caitlyn takes up on cooking.
It’s not that she’s bad at it. Cooking is all logic and chemistry if she puts her mind to it; it’s just that she never had to all her life. But breakfast should be simple enough. Slot white crumbly bread into their place on the toaster and wait for it to pop out with a loud ding. Melt a square of butter on the pan and crack six eggs into a bowl, a splash of milk, sprinkles of pepper and salt dotting the bright yellow mixture. Beating it gently with a fork. It’s almost therapeutic.
Her father is standing on the other side of the kitchen, cutting up various fruits into slices from its giant quarters out of the fridge. When she’d been younger, he used to feed them right off the knife and into her mouth—she was quite skilled at biting the slices off the edge without her tongue even making contact with the sharp blade, although it still gave her mother heart attacks when she witnessed it. It was just how they do it in Ionia, he’d said.
(Absently, Caitlyn wonders if he’s making the same attempt for the daughter he’s acquired now. She thinks it is.)
“Toast is ready,” he says, right before the machine rings sharply. “Ah. Always right on time, the old reliable.” It was the same toaster that serves her hurried sandwiches on school mornings when she’d been a girl. Caitlyn gives it a soft smile as gratitude as she goes on to pluck out the perfectly golden brown pieces of bread with her bare fingers right off the scalding metal. “Ow, ow, ow.”
“Stubborn girl,” her father huffs a soft laugh, shaking his head at her. “You never want to use the pincers.”
“Too fancy,” she says. “My fingers do the job just fine.” She spreads out the toast and butters them on the plate, and then slowly scoops out the soft scrambled egg off the pan with a spatula. She has to admit that it takes some getting used to—the first time she attempted any sort of cooking, half of the eggs were spilled out all over the counter. She’s generally better at it, now, thanks to her everyday practice of making Vi breakfast—and making sure she eats it.
Speak of the devil. “How’s she been taking them?” Tobias asks. “Eating all of them well? Are they edible to her?”
Caitlyn rolls her eyes. “You wound me, dad.”
“I’m just asking,” he chuckles. “Has she been doing better?”
“Mmm,” she considers it for a while. “She’s been eating, but it's… a progress.” Eating had been an overstatement. Vi barely wants to eat more than a pad of her fingers during the good days, and uses the excuse that she’s eaten the meal before when it was time to have lunch or dinner. It’s a constant battle. “Still, I’m trying everyday. She’s trying, every day. That’s what matters.” Silently, her head second guesses. Right?
“Hm,” he hums right back. “Well. That is good to hear. You take this with you,” he nudges the plate of fruit slices on the tray that she’s taking to the bedroom, “And tell her that if she doesn’t eat at least a slice of the fruit plate that I have lovingly cut myself, I will be very disappointed.”
“You’re going to give her a heart attack, dad,” Caitlyn smiles, gathering the plates and tea cups on a tray. “She’s already frightened of you as is.”
“If I’m frightening her into eating sufficiently, then good,” Tobias shrugs lightly. “You know, one of these days, we ought to do a proper family dinner together on a table,” he sighs. “It’s been so long.”
The lump that lives in Caitlyn’s throat ever since her mother’s passing swells at the mention, hot and upset and searing—but it dies gently just as quickly as it came. It doesn’t harm her as much as it used to, these days. “She’d be proper irritated if she knew we’re leaving the dining table to collect dust,” she tries to joke. It doesn’t fall as flat as she thought it would, because her father laughs at it, even if it’s short. It’s still a start.
“Well. You better get, then. The food will get cold,” he says. “And tell Vi I enjoyed her annotations on Ruination, will you?”
“I will,” Caitlyn calls. “Wish me luck?”
“Always,” Tobias smiles, “but you don’t need much of those anymore these days, do you, darling girl?”
The first days that Jinx returned to him, she’d been in such a state that Ekko had to stay up for three nights just to make sure she doesn’t die in her sleep. On the fourth day, she’d struggled to get up on her feet at around noon and murmurs that she wants a bath. He doesn’t ask if she wants his help, wants her to sit there with her in the quiet drizzle of the shower while she cradles herself on the floor of the bathtub. He just does.
This time isn’t that far different. Sometimes, Jinx would take too long in the shower, in the hot mist that accumulates behind the curtains, just because it feels safe. And Ekko leaves her be, because Janna knows she needs it. It’s just that this time there’s breakfast waiting on the stove that’s growing colder by the second, and Jinx hasn’t shown any sign of being alive beyond the constant drizzle of the shower for the past forty minutes.
“Jinx?” He calls with a slight knock when he finally makes his mind to call for her. “You alive in there?”
Nothing.
“Jinx?” He tries again. There’s a hot lump guising itself as panic in his throat when he calls out for her.
A muffled thud. “You can come in.”
Ekko twists the doorknob without a second thought and welcomes himself inside, stepping into the hot mist that suffocates the bathroom. There’s a silhouette of a girl curled-up behind the curtain, and he opens the curtain with a gentle swish to the side to reveal her, all drenched, water dripping from the choppy edges of her hair.
“You okay?”
“Mmm,” she hums, shrugging a shoulder half heartedly.
“Have you soaped up yet?”
“No.”
Ekko doesn’t ask why. He climbs over the wall of the tub and carefully reaches for the bottles of toiletries lining up the wall, grabbing his shampoo—lavender and sandalwood—and squeezing it into his open palm. “I’m gonna wash you up, then, is that OK?”
“Sure.”
It’s only after the confirmation that Ekko dares to touch her, lapping up her hair in his shampoo from front to back, down to the edges, the drenched strands plastered to the back of her ears, massaging it until it foams up. Gently cards his fingers through them until they aren't tangled up in clumps anymore. And then he switches to his regular soap, lathing it up between his palms before he works on her back; the crevices of her neck, her arms, her waist. When he’s done, he takes the shower off its head and rinses her clean, lets the foam run off her body and line down, down, down, disappearing into the drain, streaks of blue hair caught-up in the metal.
“I have to leave, you know,” Jinx murmurs into her arm, barely audible between the constant drizzle of the water. The hot lump in his throat flares again, then—he knows this, he’s always known this, that she will always be leaving; no place will ever be good enough for her. He knows this. He knows that he’s a man who’s stalling, and Jinx knows it, too. He just wished—he wanted—he needed more time. Needed to fully inhale all this false sense of domesticity before it slips between his fingers and disappears over the horizon on a sunny day. But no amount of time was ever going to be enough. Not if it was her.
This time, the lump guises itself as grief, and Ekko knows that the only thing to do with grief was to let it go.
“I know.”
“Cait?”
“It’s me,” she greets, slow and gentle, settling the breakfast tray on the far end of the bed. “Hey.”
Vi turns around to face her, blinking her eyes groggily at her and the sun that penetrates the gap on the curtain window. She then scrunches her face at the sight of the tray.
“I was wondering if you’d have breakfast with me,” Caitlyn says, easing herself onto the bed by her side. “Is that alright?”
“We always do,” Vi snorts, but there’s a smile tugging on the corner of her mouth when she says it, even reluctantly. She scoots over to lean against the headboard of the bed as she straightens her back, and her frames stiffened when Caitlyn placed the plate of toast and eggs on her lap.
“Would you like sugar on your tea?”
“Sure,” she chirps nervously.
They ate like that, right on the bed, and Caitlyn tries not to watch too intently on how Vi takes to the food, or how much she’s eating, or if she’s just cutting them up into little pieces like she used to the first few days that Caitlyn had been well enough to finally, truly looked at her and thought: this is a problem.
The eating, yes. But also the quiet. The docility. The absence of light in her eyes. It makes Caitlyn terrified. She wants to be someone who Vi trusts, who knows that this woman loves her with her whole heart. She wants Violet to know that she would burn the world in a heartbeat if she’d asked. But she hasn’t been that sort of person to her in a long time.
She is trying to be now.
“Is it good?” Caitlyn asks, trying to mask the way her voice wavers in anxiety by a slight huff of laughter. “Edible?”
Vi smiles the faintest amused smile at that, too. “Course, cupcake. Don’t worry.”
But all that Caitlyn does is worry, about the nights when she locks herself in the bathroom while Caitlyn begs outside the door. About the hollow of her cheeks, the exhausted bruise under her eyes. She worries and worries and worries about her; she prays and prays and prays for her to be well, traces the tattoos and scars marring her bare back as she sleeps with strangled breaths. Caitlyn has never prayed before in her life. She has never prayed for anyone but her.
Vi seems to be reading her expression, because she reaches out for her arm and says, “hey. I swear it’s edible.”
Caitlyn raises an eyebrow. “Prove it, then.”
Vi rolls her eyes, but she takes another bite of her toast and eggs and swallows it without much struggle. “Happy?” She asks, muffled by the sound of her chewing. It should be obnoxious, but right now Caitlyn’s chest is swelling with so much relief that she doesn’t have the mind to think of anything else.
“Very,” she tells her, nudging the plate of fruits on the tray. “My dad cut these up for you—said he’ll be very disappointed if you didn’t eat them.”
Vi watches them with some semblance of curiosity. “What are they?”
“Melons, I’d assume. And tangerines. Want me to peel them for you?”
“I can do it myself, you know,” Vi huffs softly, but she’s met with Caitlyn’s determined frown as she reaches for the plate between them.
“But I want to,” she says, burrowing her thumb into the leathery skin of the fruit. “I want to.” She peels them in her bare hands, right then and there, separates the white filaments from the flesh. Reaches out to feed her, places the piece of tangerine in the red of her tongue. Brushes her chapped-up lip with her sweet, juice-drenched fingers, like whispers of prayers that goes I love you. I want us both to eat well. On and on and on.
“Your hair’s getting long again,” Ekko murmurs. He’s finished warming up the last of the potatoes that had gone cold on the hob as Jinx perches by his side near the counter, stirring her glass of murky coffee. Absently, he reaches to stroke her hair, gathers her bangs from the front of her face and anchors them to the back of ears. And then lower, lower, down the small of her back that’s always taut; rubbing circles with his open palm, the way he does when he’s spooning her at night, hushing away the terrors that make their way into their bed.
Their bed. Fuck.
“D’you like it?” Jinx raises an eyebrow, nudging her knee against his leg. Her smile, her dimples, the soft lines around her mouth.
“Course,” he shrugs, and she knows he’s not saying it just because. And then he decides to say: “I’m gonna miss you, y’know,” because Ekko knows he’s a man who’s stalling.
There’s a glint in Jinx’s eyes that might mean something—a wide-eyed stare of surprise, a sudden gunshot to the back—but it ends with a hitched breath slowly easing itself out of her mouth, and that was it. It hasn’t been anything else in a long time.
“I know.”