Chapter Text
Her body had moved on its own, with an animal-fear that had over-ridden her every sense of self-hatred and the will to break the cycle. She'd killed the Noxian who rounded the corner in the maintenance tunnel- before he could do anything about it, either. She told herself it was to prevent him finding Vi and what remained of Vander- if he was in there at all, but the thought had only come after her fingers had moved, after his neck was broken. All the beast wanted was to survive. All Jinx wanted was to die.
And even after she was alone and the explosions had stopped, she kept running. Broken ribs, chattering teeth, and the sound of a clapping monkey and its damn cymbals following after her. She couldn't stop, couldn't look back, couldn't keep going, not in a body burned and threatening to fail.
The shimmer drove her onward.
She had thought once that it would have worn off eventually, that her eyes would reflect blue back at her in the mirror if she just waited long enough, but it turned out, she was more like her fathers than she wanted to admit. Both were permanently changed, both would be remembered as monsters, and the eyes that looked back at them hadn't been their own choice in a long time.
Choice. What a joke. There was only really chance. Luck. And hers was the worst. Jinxed.
If she'd had a choice, she would have died with Vander. Either time.
She wasn't even running, not really, not upright. Leaping, surging, or perhaps scrambling, all with unnatural speed from corner to corner... like a beast.
Flashes of pink lightning in the dark.
Her hand slipped at last, and the fear of the fall mingled with relief that she had finally given out, lungs heaving, making sounds that didn't sound like breathing. She coughed. She writhed, her body fighting with something unseen for just one more breath, just one more heartbeat. Perhaps it was her mind her form fought against-- her thoughts were begging for end.
She wasn't sure if she imagined the wolf standing on her chest with its jaws around her neck, but she hoped he would bite.
Sleep at least was comfortable, if indeed it could have been called sleep, if it was not unconsciousness. It was dark and quiet, and hopeful to be permanent.
Waking was... disappointing, to say the least.
She could actually feel the pain of her condition now, and it radiated through every part of her. The fight had left and instead she was stuck in place, too agonized to move. It was hot and freezing cold all over and it blocked out any awareness of her surroundings.
It would have been better if you had died. You owe us that much.
"Quiet," she croaked, fingers twitching as she tried to wave away the specters that might have once been her brothers. "Shut up." Her voice didn't sound right- more like a reptilian hiss than any noise a human might make.
They left her alone for a while like that, until she started to get hungry-- and then they taunted her with cupcakes just beyond reach.
"I should have-" she pushed herself upright against the curved wall of the tunnel. "Turned her into a snack after all. Maybe not. Should have turned someone into a snack," she managed, babbling, laughing as the pain in her ribs threatened to make her puke. Now that would hurt. Squeezing all of her fractured bones around and pinching the nerves while her stomach convulsed against the injured tissues? Laughably painful. Even worse than the laughing she was doing now.
...When had she thrown up? She didn't remember it happening, but she could smell that she had. It was almost pure stomach acid. She hadn't eaten in too long.
She could feel the shimmer beast creeping up on her again, threatening to take over. She had to move now or the beast would move for her, and it wouldn't be nearly so careful with her broken body.
She followed the dark onward, sometimes aware, sometimes not, always putting one foot in front of the other.
The maintenance tunnel ended eventually after many turns and branching paths... at a fissure in the dark.
Waste pipes dumped brackish water down into the pit, and she knew that somewhere beneath her were the lanes and most of the rest of Zaun. Always, always it was being defiled. That's what made it Zaun.
Maybe that's what made her Jinx, too.
She had a choice now, though a laughable one, like all the rest she'd ever been handed. She could turn back into the endless maze of pipes and hope they brought her somewhere else, (where she could die) or she could jump.
Jump and maybe die.
Of course she jumped.
The shock of hitting the water from such a distance was enough to knock her senseless. Had the water not been churning already, it would have killed her.
The last thing she saw before once again falling to unconsciousness was... Silco's face. His hands on her skin were cold, and he smiled as a trail of bubbles passed through him, drifting upward. "Welcome home, Jinx." As always, he was just beyond her reach. Just like Vi. Just like Vander. Just like all the rest of the family she had killed with her own two hands.
The water was calm. The water was raging.
Have you had enough yet?
Something like a primal scream dragged itself out of her throat as she, in turn, dragged herself out of the water. She drove her fists into the rocky shore over and again until they bled and she collapsed again. She wasn't quite crying. She didn't have the energy for that. She didn't have the energy for the rage she had spent on the shore, either, but it had to go somewhere.
The hunger was gnawing like a wolf at her middle, and the rest it allowed her was sparse. It drove her like she was a sheep to be herded.
She was up again against her will, grumbling her hunger and protests alike senselessly into the air. "Gotta eat to live. Don't want to do either."
There was once a shimmer den near here. While Silco was alive, she could have found an ally, someone who would feed and clothe and tend her whether he had wanted to or not-- and probably wouldn't have wanted to.
Before Vi knocked it down.
Before Jinx knocked Silco down.
She was eating something. She couldn't tell what, couldn't stop, either, though. It tasted amazing. It tasted like shit.
She'd thrown up again.
She was eating something else. Trash probably.
Before she knew it, she'd bitten a person-- and drawn blood.
She spat.
The hands on her, belonging to the person she had bitten, apparently in response to being grabbed, were gloved, the uniform far too familiar.
Blue, blue, blue, all blue-
What was her name?
The replacement.
"Caitlyn," growled the shimmer-beast, and she leapt atop her assailant, only to be yanked back. She wasn't even sure why she was attacking. Did she hate Caitlyn? Probably, but it didn't really matter. She would have attacked anyone. She was a beast. Like Vander.
That's not Caitlyn.
Did they... have a dog-catcher on her?
She choked on it and tugged dumbly at the wire. It didn't give, at first, and she could hear the whir and whine of the hex-tech gem somewhere nearby powering it. Here fingers climbed the catch-pole even as they hauled on her, and she... found a weak spot. She knew the feel of metal and wire and where it would snap.
Everything has its breaking point.
The gem was in her hand again, and she held it up to the light, basking in a strange moment of clarity.
Do you know what you've done?
She knew what to do with hextech.... maybe later. She swallowed the gem.
Broken catch-pole still hanging from her neck, Jinx went on the assault, biting, scratching, punching, and kicking.
A jolt went through her. She barely felt it, but she knew when the dark came again what happened.
Waking in a wagon headed back to Piltover was exactly what she had expected. Finding her most obvious injuries haphazardly patched up was not. This batch of peanuts must be unusually soft, then.
"The chains are a nice touch," she mumbled. There was a shackle around her neck, her hands were in cuffs and so were her feet. She was tethered by a chain to the back wall. She might have called it overkill, once, but she was... different now. The number of chains was probably prudent, actually.
And speaking of different, her head felt oddly bare-- beyond even the haircut she'd given herself. (With a piece of glass, despite Ekko's protests.) They must have processed her already, then.
Stillwater was expecting her.
That had become something of a standard for "Jinxers" after her prison break... which meant they thought she was a fanatic and not the genuine article.
Perhaps they would have killed her already if they knew who she was. That was hard to say.
The glares of several enforces, all in gas masks, landed on her when she spoke.
"Just another damn Jinxer," said one of them. "Don't you know your idol is dead?"
"If only she could be," Jinx replied, closing her eyes again. There was a whine coming from outside that was making her head hurt worse.
"Leave it, Ko," said another, who sounded like a woman. "She's one crazy following another. You can't reason with them."
"If that's what you call reasoning," Jinx said with a snort. "Gods, what is that sound?" she demanded, cracking an eye.
"Who's your supplier, girl?" demanded the one apparently called 'Ko.' "I can see you've taken a fresh hit."
"I thought we'd shut down the last of the production lines. The vermin do love their drugs."
Jinx' gaze shifted over to the woman. "I guess I can't say much about vermin, being all tied up like a dog." She paused. "You know, there's a joke to be made about that."
"Shut up."
"Y'know, 'cause a female dog is a bitch."
The woman got to her feet, holding to one of the rails on the ceiling for balance, billy-club in hand.
Jinx' eyes flicked down to the club in her hand for just a second. "'Course, you wouldn't know anything about that now would you?" she asked dryly.
"I said-"
"Is it answer questions or shut up?" Jinx demanded, scoring an answering knock to her jaw. All things considered it was light, but in such a state, it was almost enough to lay her out again. Her head pulsed with pain in time to the rhythm of her heart- which she could not get to slow down. It's that damn sound.
The officer leaned close while she was stunned. "Pick. One," she spat, and returned to her seat.
When the daze wore off, the noise was louder. It was making her fidgety. She could feel the shimmer beast under the surface, spoiling for a fight, and convinced that one was coming. "Could you just... do something about that whining?" Jinx asked after a long while. "It is really starting to hurt. Please, it is driving me crazy." She laughed. "More crazy." The last thing she wanted right now was to stir up the enforcers into hurting her. Killing her, maybe, but they weren't likely to while she was restrained. But then... you could never quite tell with them.
"I don't hear anything," Ko replied, sounding bored. "Is this some kind of a joke?"
She turned her head, tracking with the shifting.
It wasn't coming from the automobile after all.
She knew that pattern. It was a distance shift, something accelerating toward their position but at an oscillating pace, shortening the sound waves relative to their location. It was... moving back and forth in gentle curves, like something riding folds of differently pressurized air.
She knew that sound. She knew it well. Right now, she wished she could name it. It was on the tip of her tongue.
"What is she doing?" the woman demanded.
"I- wait I think I hear it too," Ko started to say, though too late.
The shimmer beast yanked at her chains, dragging her to the end of their slack as far from the right wall as she could get.
One of the enforcers pulled a gun, but not soon enough to do anything with it.
The van tipped to its side with a crash that dented the wall, and Jinx dangled, choking, from her chains.
The impact was enough to set the vehicle tumbling, tossing its passengers about like seeds in the wind, and they collided with each other and the walls indiscriminately.
Jinx lost time after her head met the helmet of one of her captors. Everything was still and quiet when she opened her eyes again, though not for long. Someone was messing with the locked door at the back of the vehicle.
She had to straighten her legs, which did not want to support her, to stand on what should have been a wall, but was now the floor. They only held for a few seconds, long enough for her to gasp in a few precious breaths, and fall back into the choking hold of the shackle on her neck.
She wasn't the only one to have come through the tumbling conscious, though two of the five guards had not been so lucky. (Was it lucky?)
One now had a gun trained on her, the other two at the sideways doors.
They'd be open soon.
She could hear the tumblers complaining as some unskillful hand hammered a rake into the lock.
Finally the doors snapped open to reveal... no one.
One of the enforcers fired anyway- twice, before the other yelled at him to stop.
Apparently 'Ko' was one of the conscious ones.
A crystal grenade rolled into the back with them, and mayhem broke loose as they scrambled to toss it out, run away, and cover it, somehow all at the same time, and all interfering with each other attempt.
Had she been able, Jinx would have let out a sigh. The shimmer-beast was trying to dodge it, but she had come to the end of her ability to move. It was less-than-lethal anyway. It probably wouldn't kill her, even if it scared the shimmer-beast. Unfortunately.
Firelights.
That whine must have been their hoverboards. She did know that sound.
The grenade went off, and everyone in the back of the wagon was enveloped.
She couldn't breathe.
But of course... this couldn't be the end. She wasn't that lucky, and they weren't that smart. The would have killed her sooner if they were.