Chapter Text
She sighs, eyes shut tight. He can hear the strength she uses to grip the grenade with both hands, so forcefully her skin scrapes against the dented metal. Her entire body trembles, as if she is silently fighting against it, against the unconscious, involuntary movement of her muscles.
When she stares at him again, it’s — it feels different. Like she’s just shed a thin layer of the colossal wall that still places the both of them on complete opposite sides.
“Alright,” she says, weakly.
“Alright?”.
Another sigh. Her hand trembles again. He is still holding tight to the z-drive’s pull string, not entirely trusting either his words nor his luck to not fail him again. Her thumb carefully plays with the trigger of her monkey bomb, and his nail scrapes on the metal of the his device's string. There’s a cold sweat still running down his back, soaking his shirt, and his throat is so sore he can feel where it hurts when he swallows dry air.
“Just… Talk, Ekko. Spill whatever it is you want to say”.
He is still holding on the guard rail separating the workbench from the propeller where she is standing. Under any other circumstances, Ekko would’ve let himself get lost in there. He’s thought about this damn place so many times. When they were kids, and Powder kept rambling about how she’d found the “perfect spot” for their projects, and how she couldn’t show it to him yet, because it’d spoil the surprise. And then, so many years later, everytime he had to pick up the scraps from her explosions, knowing very well that that place — that small piece of heaven she’d promised to share with him someday was now the home of her killing machines.
He’d thought about what he’d do should he ever find the place. Pick it clean? Sabotage every project he could find?
Burn it to the ground?
He can still smell the smoke from her bomb. The bomb that never went off. Not anymore, at least.
The metal creaks when he moves. A tentative step. She follows him, empty eyes tracking him like prey, even now.
“Can you put the bomb down? Please?”.
The noise of her nail scratching the metal hurts his ears. “No”.
“You won’t pull it,” he says, heart pounding wildly, almost out of pace. He is hoping more than predicting. “Because I’m here”.
“Why not? Wouldn’t be the first time”.
When he thinks back to the bridge, it takes him a while — to swim through the hazy memories of foodstands and children laughing, riding his bikes, their bikes, across a bridge that was so much more than just bloodshed or a landmark of division — but he finally finds it.
It’s still not the bridge, in his eyes. It’s her blood-stained face, her moving desperately, trying to push him off, the unadulterated rage in her blue eyes.
When had they become like that, after all? When did he become the boy she wanted to hurt? When had she become someone he’d wanted so… truthfully so see dead, even if it had to be by his hands?
There had been blood on her face. He could see her teeth, stained just as much. Her face flashes in his mind. There’s still the ever-so-slightly phantom feeling of soft lips against his, and his chest caves in again.
Those lips that had never been stained with blood.
“So you’ll fail again?”.
She gives him a look, vibrant pink all but shining in the dim light. Almost defiant. He knows he’s walking a tightrope.
But isn’t that so undeniably them? The never-ending knife juggling of spite and reminiscence?
And she does what she’s always done. What she’s been doing for so many years that they've become indistinguishable blemishes of memories. She rises to the challenge.
“That desperate for a rematch?” Her thumb caresses the trigger one last time, before she removes the other hand and holds it by her side, turning to him, finally.
Ekko tries not to falter. There’s a question at the tip of his tongue. What happened to you? Instead:
“Sit down?”.
She sighs. “How long you plannin’ on staying?”.
He loses all the strength in his knees, and it’s all he can do not to just fall on his butt. Ekko carefully lowers himself to sit on the little steps leading up to the workbench. “How long you offerin’?”.
She scoffs, but it’s not venomous, like he’d grown so accustomed to. She shakes her head, once, and then again, as if she is trying to physically remove a thought from her mind. She walks to him. Every step is another tiny spark of hope that she allows Ekko to have, until she is, finally, standing right before him.
“Jeez, Ekko, what’s with the long face?” She says, with no bite. “I might start thinkin’ you care about little ol’ me”.
Ekko slides over to make room for her, and she sits down. The wall between them reduced to one singular monkey bomb, the one he’d seen going off so many times, who now stares up at him almost comically, like it, too, can remember sharing a death or five with him.
Ekko, Jinx, and a bomb between them. Just like it’s always been.
He grasps most of the story from what Jinx is willing to share. It’s not a lot, really, but he does his best to fill in the vacancies.
“So, Vi came back to look for you?”.
“To look for my head, sure,” Jinx says, twisting a wire around her finger. She had taken apart the entire bomb in the process of speaking, and Ekko was still side-eyeing the small cylinder where he knew the gunpowder was stored. “But killin’ me is harder than putting a pink bowtie on a turtle and bringing it to dinner with ya folks,” she raises her eyes, looking right at him. “ Case in point ”.
“Can it”.
She pushes the monkey bomb’s empty canister with her index, towards him, and it comes rolling, and collides with his hipbone. “Sure about that? I’m pretty good with cans”.
He sighs. Screw dancing. Talking to Jinx is like solving the equation to time-travel with riddles.
“You think she’s coming back?”.
“Ha. Fat chance. I mean, she’s probably out of that cell by now, if that bluecoat girlfriend of hers has any idea what she’s doing,” Jinx’s face twists into a frown. “Nah. She’s not coming to look for me anymore”.
Ekko can’t truly believe that. Powder had told him she’d never see him give up on anything before, and he knew exactly who he’d gotten that from. I know my sister, Vi had told him, love and hope burning deep in her voice.
But did she, really? He’d thought like that ever since then. Maybe Vi loved her sister so much, hoped so much… Ekko knew the undercity had a short tolerance for such a periculous thing as hope. It was just like flowers.
Didn’t survive for long where the sun couldn’t reach them.
If so, what did that make him? Sitting side-by-side with his once would-be murderer and sworn enemy. What did it tell about him, covered in ashes and still bleeding from the consecutive explosions she’d set upon him, and still rolling the bomb’s can under his fingers, sharing stories with her?
Jinx moved her neck, probably feeling pain, and the can escaped from under his finger, rolling back to her. He watched it go. Imagined himself pulling the z-drive’s string, watching it roll back and forth, endlessly.
Trapped, destined to keep going from him to her until the universe collapsed into itself.
“And… Vander?”.
Jinx took in a harsh breath. “Dead”.
Ekko didn’t reply immediately. His mind was flooded with memories of Benzo. Of him dying, and him smiling at him and telling Ekko to not get mushy on him. He’d thought once he was back to his actual world, the memories would file themselves, neatly, into different folders, and he could look back on them, on the memory of his father hugging him amidst the music and beneath the warm lighting of the bar, untainted . That that Benzo would always remain like that, a version Ekko couldn’t go back to, but one he’d never had to see stained with blood.
But, now, when he thought of his grey hair and the scent of his shirt against Ekko’s face, it merged with his wide eyes, staring dead at the greenish fog, with blood pouring out his mouth, neck twisted atop the sidewalk where he’d been killed.
Benzo was one and the same, and Ekko would forever have to live with the knowledge of having had him, losing him, having him back, and losing him again. Again, and, again, and again—
“You keep tapping that thing,” said Jinx, pulling him out of his thoughts, eyebrows furrowed. “You plannin’ you telling me what the heck that is?”.
“I’m sorry. About Vander”.
Her mouth morphed into a straight, tense line. “Thanks for the pity. I’m sure someone else would love it”.
“It’s not pity”.
“Sure, Ekko. Thanks for the flowers, too”.
“Will you—” he took a deep breath, calming himself. “I lost people, too, y’know”.
Her eyes tremble again, almost like her mind is also drowning in memories. She brings her knees to her chest and hugs them both, tightly. “Another one of my lifetime performances”.
“ Benzo wasn't you,” he spits out. “You had nothin’ to do with it”.
“But I did. The enforcers came down here because of me ”.
It was you. You gave us the tip.
Maybe all there was between them now, the one single thread still holding Ekko and Jinx together, was the unshakable weight of that mistake. They were both arms of the giant, and the entire world was their shared guilt.
“The enforcers didn’t kill Benzo”.
“No,” she says, nodding, and she’s not looking at him. “ Silco did”.
There is a silence between them, thunderous, like a rough wave about to crash on the shore. He reaches for the cord again.
“I don’t know what you’re expecting to hear, Ekko,” she says, and it’s tired, like she’s gone over this in her mind, a million times over, in her own personal time machine. “I’ve thought about this since… Since he kicked the bucket on me. I don’t hate him”.
Ekko’s breath gets caught in his throat. And there it is, the truth, barenaked between them. Something he always knew, deep in his heart. The very truth he’s told himself ever since painting her face on the mural.
She loves him. Truthfully so.
“He took everything from me. Vander. My brothers. Vi. You. Lied to me. My entire life. He did,” she brings one hand to her face, fingers grasping at her bangs. “He destroyed everything. But he—” she sobs, and Ekko realizes she’s holding in a cry. Probably has been since she sat down. “He lo—”.
His hand is sliding on the space between them before he can register what he is doing. It swaps the empty bomb down the steps, clink-clink-clink. Jinx notices the sound. Her gaze drops down to his hand, then to his eyes, and it hits him like a storm.
Her eyes aren’t blue anymore, and yet, they’re still so painfully the same. Round, and expressive, wearing all her feelings on them, like she’s incapable of holding them in. And she is so scared .
He raises his hand, just a bit, and waits. She stares at him, for a long moment, and nods.
He takes another good look into her eyes before moving. There she is, right across from him, the girl who, even after his death, clings to Silco’s memory, holds it close to her heart, protects it with her entire body. She loves him. Loves the man who destroyed her life, and the man who took everything Ekko ever held dear. Benzo . Vander. Claggor, Mylo, Vi. Powder .
And she’ll never stop loving him. The space between them isn’t just dry air and residual smoke, isn’t a few centimeters of a metal stair step, isn’t the distance he still has to cross.
It’s the love rooted deep inside her heart, and the hatred burning in his veins.
“I’m sorry,” she says, choking on another sob. “I am”.
Ekko pulls her in.
She closes her eyes a second before her forehead touches his shoulder. His hand sprawls against her back, pulling her closer. She doesn’t hug him back, doesn’t bury her face into his warmth.
But she doesn’t pull away, and she cries .
The greatest thing we can do in life, he hears, as he releases the unpulled cord and uses the other hand to hold onto the back of her head, is find the power to forgive
He had chuckled, then. What had happened? Had he been so caught up in the wonderness of invention and of falling in love that his heart had for a second forgotten about the hatred he felt for that man? Silco of all people had told him to find the reason in forgiveness.
“I’m sorry, too,” he says, with his voice still laced in sadness. “About Vander. About Vi. I am”.
He pulls back, ever so slightly, just enough to look into her eyes again. The tear streaks had cleaned paths through the soot covering her face.
“I think…” he wets his lips, looking for the right words. “He was a monster. And I can't ever... Forgive him. But I am sorry that you lost him, too”.
“You don’t mean that,” she says, pulling back farther. But when she meets the resistance of his hand on her back, she doesn’t struggle. “You’re just trying to make me stay”.
“Well, are you?”.
“Maybe if you stop lying”.
“It’s not a lie. Look, you asked me about this, right?”.
Jinx blinks, staring at him, as he uses his free hand to bring the z-drive to rest on his lap. And, of course, because who would she be, if not, she immediately catches on:
“Is that… hex-fucky-somethin’?”.
“Kinda. You see where I am going, right?”.
“You got my monkeys inside that thing,” she replies, cleaning the tears from her cheeks. “So unless you’re a crazed stalker, nah. I’m not following”.
Ekko had all of half an hour to cling onto the memories of that place, that special version of his life, all to himself, before having to open up his heart. His eyes blink up at her, as she stares intently into the device, seemingly entranced.
Of course. The one person he has to share this with.
“I’ll sound real crazy for a bit”.
Jinx raises one eyebrow. “Yeah? Just a bit? That’s good,” Ekko moves his hand, so she has the freedom to lean back, into the heels of her hands, and stare at him. “I don’t like the competition”.
“Well,” he tries rolling his eyes, but there’s no might to it. “You know how the Hexgates work, right? Lots of people think it’s some magical teletransportation thing”.
She nods. “It’s just goin’ fast. Super fast”.
“Yeah. Now think about it. Going that fast”.
“Death,” she says. “That’s death. Boom. Ya dead”.
“Hypothetically,” he moves his hand, trying to make her take this seriously. “Think about being able to go that fast”.
She rolls her eyes. “What am I? The fastest mailman in the world?”.
“Now imagine ,” he grunts. “Leaving the undercity during, say, daybreak. Then go that fast, until you reach…” he thinks. “Shit, I don’t know, Freljord?”.
“Whom the fuck are you runnin’ from?”.
“So,” he says, again. “It was daybreak when you left this place, but when you arrived there, it’s still the night of the previous day. What did you do?”.
“The world’s shittiest backpacking speedrun?”
He stares at her. She sighs. “Alright. Time travel, smarty-pants? What are we pullin’ outta the looney bin next—”.
⏮ ⏮ ⏮
“Alright. Time tra—”.
“—vel, smarty pants?”.
“What the fuck?”.
“And then something about a looney bin?” He grins.
Her eyes seem to grow thrice in size. And they’re pretty distracting, shining in pink. She blinks at him, then at the z-drive, noticing his hand around the puller.
“Do it again”.
“Tell me something. Something I wouldn’t be able to make up on the spot”.
She frowns, but there’s that glint in her eyes. The one that used to make his heart flutt—
“I have a winged monkey tatt’d on the back of my left thigh. And it’s playing the cymbals, too”.
He pulls the cord before he can think too much about it, or else he’ll choke.
“I have—”.
“—a winged monkey tattooed on your thigh. And it’s playing… Something”.
Jinx grins. “No, I don’t”.
“But you—” her grin gets bigger, and he scowls. “Asshole”.
“So now I know you didn’t, like, develop a mind-reading bullshit power either, ‘cuz I was toots thinking how big of a lie that was”. He is so distracted by the fact he actually managed to make her grin that he is willing to overlook her jerkness. “You sayin’ you used the hexgate’s acceleration thingy to make actual time travel?”.
Another deep breath. She looks enthralled by the whole thing.
Time to make things worse. Again.
“Not just me,” he turns the z-drive around, so she can take another look at her little monkeys.
It dawns on her so fast. He’s not surprised by it, but it does fill him with new dread when she hugs her knees once again, and with a tone that is either wonder or expectation, demands:
“Tell me”.
So, he does.
From the moment Benzo’s name leaves his mouth, to the very end, Jinx doesn’t ask him a single question. She listens. Not glazing over, no interrupting. She changes positions, tries to sit straighter, and then to rest her back against the rail, but her eyes never leave him.
It’s only mid-story that he realizes his voice is shaking, and he is choking on a sob, just like her.
He almost wishes she would interrupt. That way, he could have another second to think before he says:
“And, after the inventor’s party, we went back to your, well, to this place”.
“This… Z-drive, it consumes matter to work, then?”.
“Life,” he corrects her, still trembling. “It… Works fine within the limits. Anything beyond that, and…—”.
“Ekko—”.
“I left him there,” he brings his hands to his face, almost pulling the skin. “It’s my fault he—”.
“Ekko” .
“He waited for me. He made Zaun better for everyone while I took my sweet fucking time, and—” there’s a strangled laugh coming out of his throat, and he is not sure if even sounds like him. “And now he’s gone. Just, gone”.
Jinx studies his face. She offers him no help. No soothing words. For a second, it looks like she almost… Isn’t there. And, even through his despair, Ekko raises his gaze to follow the direction she is looking at.
A mirror, decorated with post-its notes. It’s all broken and covered in a coat of dust. He can’t even see their reflections on it. But Jinx is fixated on it. And her mouth is trembling.
“Feels like shit, doesn’t it?” She says, in a voice so low it barely registers. “Being the one who keeps gettin’ to walk away”. Her eyes find him again, and there’s no softness in her voice when she says: “Welcome to the club, I guess”.
Her voice is so cold, detached, and… empty that it scares him for a moment. He remembers the sight of the Professor singing to the kids at the square, his words of encouragement each and every time he and Powder came up with a new theory. His never ending support.
And it’s all gone now. Because Ekko wanted to come back to the world he had to fight tooth and nail to just barely keep alive.
It dawns upon him, then. He’ll be alone. In his pursuit of knowledge, in his attempt to save his tree, his home, he’ll forever be the only who gets to keep moving foward.
“I’m sorry,” Jinx says. “About your teacher. Sounds like a kind of… not too much of a son of a bitch Piltie”.
Ekko swallows, nodding. “I don’t even… I don’t even know if he had a family. Or how I should tell them. How I could”.
“Okay, hold your horses. For someone who can turn back time, you’re sure in a hurry”.
He worries his lip between his teeth. He traveled to a dream and invented time travel, but his tree is still dying.
“Only four seconds, though”.
“Was enough to keep me from dyin’, wasn’t it?”.
His chest tightens. The last time, when she jumped, he lost sight of her body in the shadows. And for the painfully long second it took the z-drive to rewind, he thought… He thought—
“Where are you going?”.
Jinx stretches her arms above her head, but there’s something practiced about it. He’s faced her on opposite sides of a battle countless times, enough to see that the typical, cat-like laziness in which she moves is nowhere to be seen.
“To sleep. I’m dead tired,” she grins.
“Funny”.
“The exit is that way,” she points. “See yourself out”.
Ekko rises to his feet as well. “Sure. Maybe tomorrow,” he looks around, feigning ignorance when she stares at him, puzzled. “Where do I crash tonight?”.
“Relax, Boy Savior,” she turns her back to him, walking, and his heart drops seeing that she’s walking towards one of the propellers, until he sees what seems to be a little tent at the end. “You did it. Saved the girl. I’m not… I’m not doing it anymore”.
He follows behind her. “I just came back from a parallel universe, dude. Spare me a roof over my head, maybe?”.
She scowls. They’ve never been so… Calmly side-by-side like this in years, and he only now realizes how taller he’s grown. When they were kids, she used to tower over him. Claggor had always been very reassuring in telling him that boys hit their growth spurt eventually, but Mylo and Vi never ran out of jokes about him one day going on his tiptoes to kiss Pow-Pow .
Jinx stares at him, and it gives him enough time to look at her. Really look at her, for the first time since this all started. Her skin is paler, somehow. Her eyes, sunken in, visible even with the soot. The drop of her collarbone is also much easier to see now.
And, of course, there’s the hair. So short . Just like…
Powder’s face flashes into his eyes for a second. Sun-kissed skin and crooked smile, and hair in little buns. But it gives way so easily it almost startles him. Because when he thinks about how he wants to see Jinx, it isn’t Powder’s face that stays.
It’s hers, at the bridge, staring at him sideways, mischief glinting in her eyes and a smirk so devious she didn’t even need the pistol to drive chills down his spine.
He’d told Powder about how easily he’d given up on her. Promised he’d never forget that day, and the hope she’d made him realize he still carried within him. Now he wonders if he there was ever any way he could, eve if he wanted to?
Was that all it took? For him to look at her and see how much they’d grown? Taller, and apart? To see the arch of her eyebrows and the shape of her face and realize that even the deepest of hatreds hadn’t managed to poison the affection he had for a lost childhood?
That all the blood their lives could spill between their feet couldn’t wash away the fact that she’d been, and, on some level, would always be his dearest friend?
“Fine,” she huffs. “But you’re leaving in the morning”.
“So very charitable”.
He follows her halfway through the propeller before she stops him with a gesture and says she’ll go in alone. She disappears inside the tent for a moment, and comes back out so quickly she almost trips on her way out. Ekko takes the pillows and blankets from her hands.
“Something wrong in there?”.
She doesn’t reply. They walk back to the main pole, and she starts setting the things on the floor. While she does so, he knows the memories aren’t lost on her, either, because she does it just the way he expected her to. Taller pillow for him, facing where the light comes from.
How many times had Vander caught him with his head hanging from Powder’s bed, snoring out of his mouth, probably drooling, too? And how many times had Vi picked him up so he wouldn’t crank his neck, and placed it side-by-side with Powder’s, also snoring into his ear, before covering them both with blankets? He still remembers the time when Benzo had come back to the shop to find them both asleep atop a bunch of schematics and squibbles, all made in very professional bright pink crayons. How he had tried to rub the sleep from his eyes as Benzo had carried them both to Ekko’s bed, one on each arm, and how, later, he had awoken with his head resting on her shoulder.
It’s pitch black outside, and just the tiniest of lights come in from the open ceiling. There are no stars in the undercity’s sky, so it’s probably nightlights from the factories and shimmer facilities. It seems fitting that Silco’s daughter sleeps under the reflection of his rotten empire.
They lay side by side. And he knows he won’t sleep until she does, even if it takes until sunup.
For some reason, he thought Jinx would be a restless sleeper, turning around and kicking him in the sheens, but she stays almost unnervingly still. Her breath is still uneven, so he knows she is still awake.
“Jinx,” he calls.
“I am asleep. You’re talking to a sleeping person right now”.
“What are you going to do? Tomorrow?” And after that?
Always?
It is a very quiet answer. “I don’t know, Ekko”. A beat of silence. Then: “What will you do?”.
There is so much he hasn’t told her. About the parallel universe. About them. About him, in this very world they’re standing in right now.
And the axis of the question thereby lies in the fact that the Ekko that exists in this moment, sharing a cold night floor with Jinx, can’t be the same Ekko who will go back home to the Firelights once the sun rises. The Ekko who has a community to care for. A community she’s hurt so much.
A community who can’t bear to have their secrets spilled to her.
“I have to go back home”.
“I know”.
He turns. She is still staring at the open sky, so he watches the shape of her face, the rising of her every breath. “I’m trying to save my place,” he says, in one breath, and if it wasn’t for the one-second too late rising of her chest, he wouldn’t know that took her by surprise. “It’s… it’s all going to shit if I can’t solve this, actually”.
“It’s going to be fine. Probs. You’re pretty good at fixin’ stuff”.
He takes a deep breath. His eyes are still burning from crying. For Benzo. For Heimerdinger. It’s all so incredibly tiring, all this crying. “I don’t know about all that”.
“Yeah, ya do. Never seen somethin’ you can’t kick back into workin’”.
We’ve both kicked each other around enough, haven’t we? He thinks. So why hasn’t this worked out yet?
“I have”.
Another deep breath, this time from her. “This doesn’t count. There’s no fixin’ me”.
Ekko buries his face in his pillow — her pillow? “All this talk about fixing. I don’t want to fix shit. I want my fucking—” tree to live. Life to get back on track. If it has ever been on one. “home to survive this”.
Jinx stays in silence for another second. “What is it? What went wrong?”.
“I can’t tell you”.
“Be vague, then”.
“It’s like a poison. And everyone will die if I don’t nip it in the bud”.
“... Like actual poison?”.
He hears the question she’s not asking. “No”.
They stay in silence for what feels like an eternity, but Ekko’s so, so tired of questions. Of this day. Tomorrow, he will—
“Can I help?”.
His eyes snap open. He adjusts, lying on his side, so he can take a better look at her, but she is still not looking at him. “You want to?” She nods. “Why?”.
She shrugs. “Sounds like somethin’ I could fix”. He nods, too, absent-mindly, and she goes on. “I mean, you said you’ll have to do this alone, right? I may be a screw up, but I’m pretty, I don’t know, smart’n’shit. If you’re there to turn back time when I fuck up, maybe for once in my life I’ll fix something and it will stay fixed”.
Ekko thinks about this. Really. Or, at least, he tries. Jinx, helping save his tree? It sounds absurd.
But reality warping and time travel don’t sound too sane, either.
“You did fix something”.
“Huh?”.
He closes his eyes, wishing all the unseeable stars for a bit of courage, and says: “You brought me back”.
She scoffs. “ Powder brought you back”.
“Powder is in another universe, probably snoring right now,” he snaps back. “You’re here. And I am here”.
“So what? You just said. Your home needs you. You came back to save ‘em. Don’t try to make this into somethin’ it ain’t”.
He is so tired. And maybe that is what is making him talk so much, with no regards for the consequences that will surely follow tomorrow.
“Oh, yeah. And I spammed my rewind to keep your ass here because I don’t actually care about you”.
He can hear Jinx clenching her jaw. “What are ya even implyin’ right now, wonderboy?”.
“I'm not implying shit. I’m telling you. I chose to come back, and I’m choosing to stay. Here. With you”.
“Right”.
He raises his torso just a little bit, to rest his weight against one propped up arm. “I told Powder that I gave up on you,” he hears Jinx’s breath catch in her throat. “Because I thought you were lost”.
“I am”.
Ekko brings one hand to her. He gives her enough time to see it coming. When she doesn’t move away, he carefully rests it atop the right side of her face, as softly as he can. “Then who am I talking to right now?”.
She scoffs, but it’s a choked out sound. “Shit if I know”.
He wipes one of her tears with his thumb, and feels her actually tremble beneath the touch of his skin. “ I do”.
Her hand comes to rest atop his. It’s so cold he almost flinches, but stops himself just before it happens. “Ekko”.
“Yeah?”.
“This other Powder, was she happy?”.
His voice is a sliver of itself, strained and pained when he replies: “I think so, yeah. I mean, no one is happy all the time…” bright blue eyes, giggles behind a bar counter, and playful dancing flood his mind. “But I think she was”.
Jinx’s touch grows firmer, grasping his fingers. “Were the people around her… Happy too?” She opens her eyes. Pink, but alive. Here . “Did she make ‘em happy?”.
“I don’t think anyone makes other people happy, Jinx. I think…” he tries to collect his thoughts, but her touch is so cold, and so grounding, he just says what’s right at the front of his mind: “I think we all just cling to each other, and try to make things better all around us” he thinks about the Firelights. About how much work it takes, all the time, every day, of every year. Every food supply run he’s had to deal with, every plumbing problem. That one year when there were so many new children that there weren't enough spelling books to go around, and they made the little library, with the little cardboard cards the kids could pretend-check-out books with. “If the people we love are happy, then what else matters?”.
She laces her fingers with his, brings their conjoined hands to cover her mouth, and sobs . And Ekko lets her cry. He doesn’t know what happened, doesn’t even know how much time has passed since he disappeared, but even in the displaced void of his memory, her loneliness is so evident he can almost try and grasp it.
When she speaks again, it’s not what he was expecting.
“If you had enough… life, how far could you go?”.
Nightlight, probably the late morning employee shift, floods the hideout, hitting the mirror, and the pinkish light shines on Jinx’s face. And she is looking beyond him, towards the workbench, where the broken glass is.
“I don’t know. But, Jinx, the answer you’re lookin’ for… It's not in the past.".
She sighs, closing her eyes. She turns their hands, so his palm is against her cheek once more, and hers is resting on his knuckles. “You’re probably right…”.
The light fiddles out, drowning them in partial darkness again.
“It’d never go back far enough, anyway,” she murmurs, almost unintelligibly so.
“Jinx?”.
She gives his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Goodnight, Ekko”.
He moves his hand just a bit, just enough to move the chopped strands of blue hair out of her face, and then goes back to running his thumb just beneath the curve of her cheekbone. “Yeah, goodnight. Talk to you in the mornin’”.
In the morning, when he’ll take her to his tree — his home. His people. Take her to help him fix it.
And, like with every decision he’s ever made that involved Jinx, he knows his life will never be the same again.