Work Text:
"I woke up from the same dream
Falling backwards, falling backwards
'Til it turned me inside out
Now I live a waking life
Of looking backwards, looking backwards
A model citizen of doubt."
Pluto - Sleeping at Last
Ekko blinks, and when he opens his eyes, he sees golden light streaming through the window of his room at the Firelight’s base, warmth radiating from the small structures that had been built along the tree. Small chemtech lights were strung up and glowing faintly even in the sunlight, casting the room in a sickly green glow. The wood underneath his feet felt more unstable than it usually did, and he made a note to get that patched up just in case someone fell through trying to visit him.
The last thing he remembers is planning something, though he can’t quite remember. When he blinks, the light has dimmed away into something more normal — subtle with the shades slightly drawn. He was sitting on the haphazard attempt of a bed, knees bracketing something blue sitting in front of him, back turned.
When he looks down, he remembers what it was he had been doing.
Jinx had come into the room like a hurricane, draped in loose clothes and fabric that made her look like a Firelight, made her look like she belonged here. Her hair, unbraided and freshly dried after a wash, had trailed behind her, bundled up only enough to not drag on the ground. After all, that wouldn’t be conducive to —
“You promised you would braid my hair,” she had argued, “as long as I got it washed and shit, you’d braid it.”
Ekko didn’t remember making this promise, but if it was what she wanted — it’d taken too much work to get her here. “Yeah, sure. Sit, then.” He gestured, looking around the room for a clock. He had one on the right wall, usually, but it wasn’t there today.
It wouldn’t surprise him if Jinx took it down and apart for some spare parts. He sighed, looking at her. “You’re not supposed to break down other shit to make new stuff, you know.”
Clearly he didn’t do a good enough job at keeping the tenderness out of his voice, because when she cast her head back at him, her eyes were practically glimmering with mirth. “Well, I don’t remember that being a rule when you brought me here.”
Ekko stared at her blankly. “I didn’t think it needed to be a rule.”
Jinx shrugged, gathering her hair into one large, thick bundle of blue. When she tosses it back onto his lap, he can already tell this would be a daunting undertaking. He wasn’t sure why she wanted him to braid her hair —
He breathes in, looking at the strands he had held in his hands, grip loosening so much that blue returned to being laid across his lap and his bed. Soft, sepia at the ends as if remembered from an old photograph.
But it’s here, she’s here, but this wasn’t how things were supposed to end. They were enemies, and then not quite enemies, something else, but he can’t word exactly when that shift happened.
The last thing he can really, truly remember is her splayed out on the ground on the bridge, twin braids strewn around her as he hit her, over and over and over, thinking about the gun she had held to his chest, the bullets that had missed him.
He remembers smoke and an explosion and his leg hurting —
and that was it.
But when he thinks about it more, he remembers bringing her back to the base, begging the medics to help her, that she could change, he saw it, he saw it, Gods, he saw it —
He remembers her chained while they tried to talk to her, word in the base of using her as a bargaining chip, and him not wanting to let go, because God, he saw it —
Talking to her, seeing her — he remembers it in flashing colors.
And that’s how he’s here now, he supposes, even if everything is disjointed. Everything slides back and forth, colors dull, and he’s wondering if he has a concussion. Jinx speaks, though —
“Hey, little man,” her fingers snap, the sound echoing in his ears. “You ever gonna get to it?” Jinx shook her head emphatically, and he gathered blue strands in between his fingers, the silky smooth tresses coiling around his skin like snakes.
He breathes in.
Out.
Everything slides back into focus and he can feel the thrum of his heart in his chest, warm and fluttery. “Yeah, sorry. Just… looking at you,” he murmurs, combing through her hair with blunt nails.
She laughs, sharp as tacks, but it’s the happiest sound he’s heard from her in years. “You’ve been doing that a lot, lately.”
He hums, slides a hand over her collarbone affectionately. She’s birdlike, with thin bones and thin skin, but most importantly —
Most importantly, her skin is whole and smooth and not littered with scars, not burnt and smoking.
— she’s here, with him. He strokes over the length of her bones, before returning his hands to her hair. “Well, I can’t help it. I never thought I’d get to have you here,” he murmured, gaze half lidded.
Jinx shrugged, leaning forward just enough to give him space to work. He mourns the closeness, even though the simple intimate act of her letting him braid her hair is almost more close than if she was on him. Her hair holds memories, and he has a feeling only a few people have braided these strands before.
Vi. Vander. Silco.
If he could replace — erase — that last name, he would. But he can’t, so he settles on this. He makes sure that he splits her hair into two, first, and then into three. It’s the only braid he can do himself.
He’s braided rope, but it’s rare he’s given the opportunity and privilege to braid hair.
As if she could read his mind, Jinx tries to glance back at him, “You ever braid hair before?”
Ekko looks at her, at the way her voice is floaty and almost soft — softer than he’s heard before. “I’ve done a few braids for some of the kids here, but it’s rare. I’m usually…”
“Too busy,” she snorts, and he can see her fondly shaking her head. He has to tug the braid he’s slowly working on to coax her to keep her head still. “Hey — hey, watch the moneymakers.”
He twined the hair into a long rope, thick and efficient, as if linking straw rather than silk. He watches his hands like they aren’t his own, the movements more refined than he’s ever been able to do before. Ekko can’t help but to lean forward and press a kiss to the top of her hair, and she seems to only lean into it.
It’s ridiculous how quickly things changed. It seems like only yesterday he had been at her throat, watched her do the unthinkable to try to escape. But now, he has her here, and she’s one of them.
She still has her claws — Gods, he’s had to stop her from hurting his people too many times, but he knew she was scared, uncomfortable with the change in her life, and — well, she had grown to be a weapon.
He couldn’t change that, couldn’t change her — didn’t want to. But he wanted to see her edges soften, to see her be her and not what she was taught she had to be.
He weaves the braid tightly, left, under, right, over — left, under, right, over — left, under, right, over — until he ran out of hair for that braid. He tied it off with a band, and then looked for the violet ribbons he had on his desk.
They were a gift from Vi, he thinks — or maybe Eve, but one of them is dead and he can’t remember which —
He ties off the violet ribbons that had been giften to him, and pushes that braid over her shoulder. Her fingers ghost over the ridges that made it, toyed with the ribbon.
“Do you like it?” He asks, voice hesitant. When she looks back at him, it’s with that grin that spoke more to blades than teeth, sharp points. Her eyes are blue, a pale, pale blue that looks like ice until they shift back into that deep, salt-water blue.
“It looks great. For your first time braiding this much hair, anyways.” She hums, before turning back around to give him a chance to do the other braid. “Now you just gotta replicate it.”
Ekko thinks that really can’t be too hard — and he starts on the other braid. As he does, he hears her hum something —
-
Ekko has heard her hum this song before, something from when they were both kids. It’s soft and crooning and it sounds like a plea, and he recognizes it as a folk song that Vi told him their mother had taught them.
It’s familiar, but he doesn’t always remember the right notes.
When Jinx hums the melody, it’s how he would, missing a few notes that he could never quite fill in. He laughs, begins to weave her braid again, deft hands working with a skill he’d never known himself to have.
He hears a series of thuds on the door, but he's only half-way done with her braid. “Shit,” he mutters under his breath. “Just a second, please!”
He hears more thuds on his door, and Jinx turns around. She grabs his wrist, her braid slipping through his hand like water. “It’s okay,” she murmurs. “Just go, I’ll be right here when you come back.”
He sighs, presses another kiss to her forehead.
When he gets up and opens the door —
He opens his eyes with a ragged breath, hearing Scar bang at his door over and over and over again. “Ekko, hurry up — you’re already late to the meeting. We need to discuss next steps, especially now that Heimer… Heimerdinger? Now that the ex-councilmember is here.”
Ekko blinks furiously, blue still embedded into his iris, permeating all of his vision like spiderwebs. He looks around the room, sees the clock on the right wall, tick tick ticking away.
He rubs at his eyes, and when he looks around, there’s no golden light streaming through the room. There’s no blue hair on his bed.
There’s no Jinx.
The dream creeps away from him, leaving him with the endless feeling that everything is wrong.
He can’t waste time thinking about it, though.
The work never stops, and even if he couldn’t have other possibilities in his hand, if it was only real in dreams — he still has to make the ones he has matter.
“Yet the soul loves the braided rope of hair,
The sense of heat and light, the cheek’s faint flush.
Time blurs; nights end; one climbs a narrow stair,
The studio’s warm, the city is a hush
of streetlamps and the snow that, all night, falls.
But later when one rises and recalls
How, in the dark, the spirit clings and melts,
It is as if the ardent, giddy rush
Had happened, somehow, to someone else.”
'Eros', a poem by Timothy Steele