Chapter Text
"Always a dance with you."
Pink eyes locked on the hunched-over form of her….
Enemy?
Friend?
Jinx didn't know and didn't care to explore it. Not now. Not ever….She was tired. Tired of the gunfights. Tired of the losses. Tired of the illusions. Tired of talking. Tired of….breathing. Every breath she took felt like a chore.
"Go away, Ekko…" Jinx whispered as she slid her right thumb into the loop of her grenade, readying herself to pull it. "I'm tired of talking to ghosts…"
It was then smelled a familiar scent in the air.
She focused in on him then. He was hunched over, smoke and aqua-colored light particles floating around him. That stupid white sandglass that he drew in the middle of his face was half gone and he was panting.
Hard.
She took a passing glance at the large device that hung by his right hip and then to the ground.
Blood…
A puddle of blood.
"I-I think I'm just going to sit down for a minute," Ekko panted out. "Let me catch my…" Jinx's eyes flashed to Ekko's face and noticed that those big doe brown eyes that always had a way of catching her off guard, lost their light.
Jinx's eyes widened and her irises constricted as Ekko's body began to fall forward. As the grenade slipped through her hands and the world seemed to slow to a crawl, memories played out in her mind.
From their first meeting as Powder and Ekko…to their dozens of kid-like adventures in the Undercity….to her smacking him after he braved Silco's wrath to "save" her….to the first of many battles between the two of them as Jinx and the Boy Savior…ending at those big brown eyes staring down at her on the bridge…
All of those moments seemed to float around the two of them like shards of crystals into the night sky as his body continued to fall.
Enemy.
"Well look who it is! The Boy Savior!"
Friend.
"You may not want to be rescued…But you're still my best friend and I won't give up on you, Powder!"
These words kept alternating in her mind as she stared at his form. It was strange…In all of her battles with him, the two of them had always been able to walk away, neither the victor nor the loser. Seeing the light in eyes fade away…It struck something within her heart.
Something she didn't expect.
She couldn't…
She couldn't bear to see it…
The world snapped back to normal and without hesitation, Jinx closed the distance, inadvertently dropping her grenade down the pit that once was going to be her grave, and caught his falling body in her arms. "Ekko!" Jinx cradled his body as she eased him onto the ground. "You fucking idiot," Jinx softly said as she pulled her hand at the feel of his rapidly cooling blood on her hand.
She looked at his side and saw blood, his blood, blossoming under his overalls. "Shit. Shit!" Jinx screamed as she looked around. Her eyes flashed to the large device he held and noticed small replicas of her mechanical monkeys slowing to a stop in the large glass chamber.
Jinx shook her head and placed both of her hands on each of his cheeks. "Ekko? Ekko! Come on, don't you fucking die on me." She rapidly smacked his left cheek and to her relief, the lights in his eyes returned, albeit dimmed.
"J-Jinx…" Ekko groaned. "You're still here…"
"Why?" Jinx asked, her eyes darting around to find something, anything, to hold against his wound. "Why would you do this? Why did you stay while injured? Are you stupid? Why, Ekko! Why couldn't you just let me go?!"
"I-I couldn't…I couldn't let you die again…" Ekko answered through his ragged breathing.
Again?
What did he mean by again?
She took his hand and placed it against his side. "Don't take your ass to sleep," Jinx warned. 'Not without me…' Jinx sucked in a ragged breath. "Not even for a second or I'll kick your ass. I'll get something to stop the blood." Jinx scrambled to her feet and took off before she could hear his response.
Using the lighting from the flames of Silco's base, she searched for something to stave off the bleeding but was coming up empty. Of course, just her damn luck. She could find anything she needed when she needed to kill but to save someone? Not a scrap of—
Jinx noticed a silhouette on the ground.
A painfully familiar silhouette with that bucket hat on its head.
It was pointing down a corridor with urgency in its movement.
For a moment, Jinx felt shaken at the sight but the silhouette jumped up and down while pointing harder.
Jinx swallowed the grief that was in her heart and followed the direction of the silhouette until she came across a discarded crate with a smashed-in top. Jinx could see something white flowing in the breeze through the bottom of the crate.
Jinx ran to and noticed that there was a single strand of medical wrap and two thick pads within it. She quickly grabbed them both and turned around but the silhouette was gone. For a moment, Jinx wanted to crumple at its absences but her friend? Her enemy? The Boy Savior was still bleeding out. She had to do something right.
She had to at least try.
Jinx sped back to where she left Ekko and by then, to her horror, his skin had become ashen but he was still breathing. Jinx ignored the squelch of his blood beneath her as she ran and then skidded to his side. She peeled off his overall straps, folded them down to his hips, and peeled his shirt up only to see a fairly large piece of shrapnel, its steel color reminded her of the steel she often worked with, sticking out from his abdomen.
She reached for the shrapnel only to stop.
"Don't let your emotions overwhelm you, Jinx," Silco's voice echoed in her mind. "Removing it will only hasten his demise. You must apply pressure to both sides of his wound. Applying pressure to the wound allows the body to begin healing itself by forming blood clots."
Jinx took a deep breath and with some difficulty, wrapped the medical wrap above and then below the wound as many times as she could until it was tightly bound.
She then looked up at Ekko's face.
So many times she had seen this face.
She's seen it smile at her as "Little Man," scowl at her as "The Boy Savior" and even seen it soft and almost…tender as both. But never had she seen it look so…frail and gaunt.
"Enemy."
"Friend."
Jinx clenched her eyes shut as those words flashed in her mind, this time accompanied by Mylo and Claggor's voices. "Shut up," she hissed. She opened her eyes and looked ahead to see her silhouette again. This time, the silhouette was pantomiming swimming and then drinking before pointing at Ekko.
Jinx narrowed her eyes in confusion before her eyes brightened in realization.
Water.
Ekko needed to drink water.
Jinx tucked her arms beneath his head and legs and effortlessly lifted him off the ground. "Hang on, Boy Savior," Jinx whispered. "I won't let you die."