Chapter Text
Between oblivion and oblivion
Fair bird of paradise
Play "Forbidden Games" instead
Jayce was talking about the accident.
His tone was casual, even light—after all, compared to the battle they had survived not long ago, many things paled in terms of disaster level. And that's what people often said about growing up: things that once seemed world-ending would look trivial after a while.
At first, Ekko tapped his fingers impatiently on the table. He still wasn’t used to making small talk with a polished, high-ranking Piltover figure—exchanging harmless pleasantries, half politeness, half sincerity.
It took him a moment to realize what Jayce was actually talking about. Jayce was recalling his first encounter with Viktor. And compared with his usual confidence—sometimes laced with a hint of boasting—his tone now had the kind of engineering austerity etched into the bone: straight to the point, concise, stripped of excess emotion.
It happened when he was twenty-four. Four kids from the Lanes slipped into his apartment, found the prototype Hex crystal, and triggered an explosion. His secret research was exposed to the Enforcers and the Academy. He went before the Council court, was expelled from the Academy, lost his sponsorship, and nearly killed himself. Standing at the edge of the rubble that used to be his home, ready to jump—pop (Jayce even clapped his hands here, theatrically)—Viktor appeared.
“Seriously? Suicide?”
“Haha, it was childish. But back then it felt like the world was doomed.”
“Sounds like something a pampered topsider narcissist who’s never suffered would do.”
“Oh, come on, not that bad.” Jayce scratched the back of his neck with a wry smile, as if the jab slid right past his ears. Ekko was still at that age where being snide counted as maturity. How old was he now? Younger than Jinx—no way, right? Wait, had he ever seriously asked his new assistant’s age? He hadn’t? Really?
Ekko avoided his gaze. The tapping stopped. He stared at the enamel mug before him: a Progress Day Academy gift from some year, with Jayce’s face printed on it in the style of a “great man,” and “Man of Progress” written in Piltover’s narrow, ornate type in the upper-left corner. After Ekko joined Jayce’s lab as his assistant, it was one of the first things shoved into his hands. There were still boxes of identical mugs stacked and gathering dust in the warehouse.
It was impossible to tell whether Jayce simply didn’t care and grabbed freebies for convenience, or whether he was hopelessly narcissistic and enjoyed seeing his “heroic” face everywhere—including in the hands of an underage assistant. “Sick,” Caitlyn had judged.
“You must’ve been just a tiny brat back then. I still don’t know how Vi and the others figured out where I lived. I guess you Lanes kids have your own information channels.”
Jayce raised an eyebrow, studying Ekko’s face. So that was it—the other half of the story he had pieced together from Caitlyn and Vi. A half, still incomplete. Ekko shrugged. “You know Vi. She’s always been like that.”
That dawn, Ekko dreamed of Benzo’s corpse. He got out of bed and groped his way to the bathroom sink, retching over the narrow cabinet mirror in the cold grey light.
His situation at the Piltover Academy was, to some extent, political—“good for everyone.” You could imagine many fancier reasons dressing it up, like the newly formed Piltover-Zaun Council kept trying to lay out for him. But the truth was simple: if anyone alive besides Jayce Talis possessed knowledge or capability related to runes, that person needed to remain under Piltover’s watch.
A symbol of the two cities’ path toward understanding. We want to work together, slowly repair things, set things back on track. If old enemies (Noxus? Or Viktor?) still held grudges—if the Topside suffered, the Undercity would suffer too. Start the way Vi would: take the first step. We couldn’t find anyone more suitable than you, Ekko. If Heimerdinger were still here, nothing would please him more. Mr. Talis is Piltover’s most gifted inventor, “the man of progress.” Many would die for a chance to be his assistant. You’ll have plenty of resources. Do it for yourself—and for your parents’ wishes.
They peeled the reasons open like an onion, layer by layer, laying them before him. None of them belonged to his own wishes. It was as if they didn’t understand him, and yet they knew exactly how to make refusal impossible.
Ekko said, Fine. I need time to think. He sat the entire night beneath the half-withered ginkgo tree. Then he answered: “ok.”
Now Jayce was Mr. Talis, Professor Talis, Councilor Talis. According to old Piltover formality, his name should even be preceded by “Honorable” in official contexts. Ekko had discovered this when letters and sealed messages passed through his hands before reaching Jayce’s lab desk. He had never seen such an address—just like he had learned how to properly hold a delicate teacup only after Jayce taught him.
“Handling correspondence is an assistant’s job—apprentice’s too. Even if you were Heimerdinger’s favorite,” Jayce had said. His “Piltie-style” arrogance was hard to hide in these small details. The funny part was that if Ekko ever gave in to temptation, opened a letter, and passed the contents down to the Undercity, the consequences would be catastrophic.
Though Ekko would deny it to his dying breath, working with Jayce wasn’t bad. Compared with purely theoretical desk work, Jayce was a hands-on craftsman—good. Most of the time he was busy and unavailable—also good. After the war with Noxus ended, Jayce fell into a compulsive manic phase, making countless mechanical gadgets unrelated to Hextech: a wrench that could turn into a pry bar, a pickaxe that could become a shovel—small, precise tools prioritized for workers. Good.
It even gave the illusion that he was trying to atone for some past or future in another world.
None of that troubled Ekko. Ever since the Hexgate was completed, he had heard rumors about Mr. Talis—an arrogance equal to his talent, a politician’s polished duplicity. Ekko had prepared an entire arsenal of teenage prickliness for it. As long as they clashed, he could break free from Piltover and return home—the dirty, poisonous-air home where he found warm.
The problem was: whenever they actually met face-to-face, Jayce was too good to him. Almost delicately so—Ekko couldn’t tell how much was sincere and how much was performance. It was overkill to the point of nausea. Those sentences landed like candies handed to a child, jabbed into the space between them whenever possible: Thank you, Ekko. I really don’t know what I’d do without you. Cheer up, Ekko, you’re everyone’s hero. At least you saved me.
Blah blah blah.
When the adrenaline faded, his body felt impossibly cold, utterly drained. Ekko sat slumped at the top of the Hexgate, surrounded by numerous frozen mechanical figures. The backlash from pushing the Z-Drive too far made him feel as if he had been run over by an excavator—dizzy, nauseated.
The three-handed creature he had struck (what even was he?) had stopped moving. Then, in the blink of an eye, his mechanical body twisted around some invisible axis and vanished. Ekko wasn’t sure what had happened. Had he succeeded?
He almost didn’t recognize Jayce. Five steps away, Jayce looked at least five years older. His hair was a mess, beard untrimmed, both hands gripping his hammer’s handle as he knelt before Ekko, eyes closed—like a sculpture of a king receiving a crown, devout, noble, and serene.
Ekko thought: I’m still too late.
A wave of vertigo hit. Before his eyes shut on their own, he seemed to see Jayce’s lips tremble, a puff of white breath leaving his mouth.
Jayce opened his eyes.
They never found Jinx’s or Vander’s body.
The Z-Drive had broken. If he could get the Hextech gemstone again, he could build another—maybe even tune it to go further back. But once he built it… then what?
Thoughts. Those thoughts of going back were always there, clinging to the edges of Ekko’s mind. Mixed with the few days he and Jinx spent in the Firelights’ base building weapons—brief, but vivid. They flashed before him whenever he drafted, traced, or calculated over diagrams: her pale skin with bluish shadows under her eyes, the cloud-pattern tattoos at her waist, the heated silver needle passing through his earlobe as she worked with the lighter, her light touch, her shallow breath by his ear.
No unnecessary words, nothing about the past. They worked side by side like children playing, rushing to build for the end of the world. Jinx invented things entirely by impulse—following inspiration wherever it wandered, leaving neon-pink and sky-blue strokes across the sketches, the steel frame of a skiff, rough-spun thread stitching the cloth, upgraded Fishbones parts, Ekko’s metal hair rings, the hem of his coat.
“Why can’t you keep up! Ekko, were you even listening to what I just said?!”
If only he had stayed by her side instead of flying toward the top of the Hexgate (don’t keep going up, up)…If he had gone down, stayed down (you should go down, all the way down)…?
The worst part, Ekko thought while staring at the steaming kettle, was this: what if my “what if” isn’t the same as someone else’s “what if”?
Caitlyn stood beside him with a tin box of cookies: children in bright red scarves running through a field of snow embossed on the metal lid. Ekko bowed his head slightly, awkwardly making tea and trying not to let his gaze drift to her black eyepatch.
“You’re ruining the tea.”
“Too many requirements, Officer. If you’re looking for Mr. Talis, he’s in the underground forge. Won’t come up the whole day.”
“I’m here for you. Are you settling in?”
“Let’s skip the small talk. What brings you here, now that you’ve been promoted?”
Caitlyn pulled out a chair, got straight to the point. She spoke of something she’d found in her family’s archive—those hidden vents built into the polished walls of the tower decades ago by House Kiramman. “Just in case.”
“You know what I mean.”
Ekko stayed silent. Which possibility was easier to accept? That Jinx was dead. Or that she was alive—but wanted to disappear, far away from him.
“The cookies are for you. Have you noticed Mil’s Bakery? Finest in Piltover. Four blocks from here. People line up from the morning.”
The best bakery in Zaun was called Elaine’s. Elaine’s sweetbread didn’t come in tin boxes—they came wrapped in oiled paper tied with twine. When he was little, he only got one on Name Day. His parents used to pull it from their dusty coats like magic. Later, Benzo did the same.
“Why you? Why not Vi telling me this?”
“Your tea is terrible.” Caitlyn frowned, judgment sharp. “…I had a feeling I should tell you first.”
Oh. She hadn’t told Vi.
“I’ll keep my mouth shut, Officer.”
“Kids are terrifying to deal with, you know. If you slip up, I’ll finally have a reason to lock you up and settle accounts with the Firelights.” She crossed her legs, half-teasing, half-mocking, looking a little more relaxed.
“Ekko. I know saying this sounds cheap, and I’m not good with soothing words. But believe me—I’ve also lost the thing that mattered most.”
“When I was small, I’d heard about the Kiramman habit of building hidden doors and passages. Prudence runs in the family. But before bed, my mother used to tell me wilder ideas. Maybe she just wanted to give a child a fairy tale. I don’t know. But I believed it more than anything.”
“She said every hidden door and every hidden passage in this city leads to another country.”
Even after several years of grinding through the dye vat of politics—and surviving a hard-fought war—Jayce Talis still could hardly be called a soldier, a commander, or a politician. He remained what he had always been: an empiricist born of invention, a scientist from the City of Progress, and belonging to it.
It could also be said that his late twenties had gone too well. Success had carried him so smoothly that no critique could scratch him, and he barely noticed such things at all (he likely never realized how much of that good fortune lived under Mel’s protection). Now, with reconstruction underway and Piltover in desperate need of unity, he was tasting—truly for the first time—the bitterness of the pen, or more precisely, the bitterness of historical negationism.
All traces of Viktor were disappearing.
Jayce searched the entire city: first their photographs in the archives, then their co-authored papers, and finally Viktor’s personal belongings in the lab. Whoever the responsible parties were, they worked slowly and quietly, like a slow current, removing his existence piece by piece without drawing attention. By the time Jayce understood what was happening, Viktor’s name had nearly disappeared from Piltover’s collective memory.
The official narrative was written in a tone that allowed no dissent: a self-proclaimed prophet descended into the Undercity, performing experiments under the guise of aid, abusing Hextech with living organisms, forming a cult, and inviting Noxian influence with the intent to destroy the two cities.
Whoever they were, they clearly weren’t satisfied yet.
Rumor had it some were hoping to use the opportunity to exhume Jayce’s own past mistakes. Nothing surprising—one never truly knew whether the people sharing a council table were human or ghosts.
Finally freed from another session of the council’s buck-passing and bickering, Jayce pushed open the lab door with a loud bang, startling the figure sitting at the desk, who turned his head.
“Oh, come on, Pilty. What’s your problem?”
A white-haired head rose from behind a stack of books. Reality, like a bucket of cold water poured from above, snapped Jayce out of the fury from the meeting. Right—Viktor was gone. Mel was gone. What remained for him was a mess, a table of Piltover families of uncertain allegiance, and a Zaunite teenager at that difficult age. Sometimes thought would even came to Jayce that the glorious evolution wouldn’t be so bad. At least then Viktor and he would finally become one.
And this was Ekko’s tone? Even if Jayce was not often here lately, this was still his lab. Considering Jayce was, in name, Ekko’s guardian and sponsor in Piltover, the attitude felt almost upside down.
A complicated emotion mixed with self-disgust rose in him, as Jayce was grateful that the boy before him had saved everyone’s lives, yet he felt an instinctive discomfort at Ekko’s presence in the lab—a young assistant wasn’t unwelcome; and some liveliness in the lab helped the atmosphere; Ekko was precocious and sensible. Only—that seat had once belonged solely to Viktor. How dare the council let him sit there so lightly, as if he could be placed alongside Viktor?
“…So this is the kind of person who voted Professor Heimerdinger out of the council?”” Ekko muttered, adding fuel.
Yes. Heimerdinger.
If Heimerdinger were still here.
Jayce strode forward in a few steps and seized Ekko by the shoulders. “Yes—Heimerdinger!”
“Yes? Heimerdinger?”
The Firelights’ leader tilted his head, raising one eyebrow.
What exactly is wrong with you? His expression said. His attitude added another thread of irritation to Jayce’s mood, yet he could not quite vent it—the moment he heard Heimerdinger’s name, the force drained out of him instead.
And here was another source of Jayce’s self-loathing: Ekko’s face. The the dark skin reflected the dim blue of the lab lights, and Jayce could not stop thinking of how Mel had parted from him — Weren’t the metal rings on Ekko’s white dreads supposed to be golden?
You deserved this, Jayce Talis. You and Mel had planned to keep the owner of the rewind-rune in Piltover. Even when she was leaving, she couldn’t let go of the city she had shaped with devotion. Sacrificing Zaun’s future for Piltover’s prosperity—just as the people here had done for decades, centuries. Ekko was innocent. He was sixteen-seventeen-ish, barely understanding any of this. And yet you treated your savior this way—your suffering was entirely self-inflicted.
You had strayed far from the path you once dreamed of with Viktor, and from the person you once were.
The thought struck like a nail driven into the knee: not much pain at the moment of impact, but enough to trigger a tremor of exhaustion. Anger was never something that could support a body; to an inventor, it was always just noise that obscured reason.
He did not even realize when his knees gave out before his mind did.
In the next moment, something Ekko could hardly believe happened: Councilor Jayce Talis, imposing a second ago, suddenly collapsed to his knees before him, hands and forehead dropping heavily onto Ekko’s shoulder.
“…Hey, man, are you alright? What’s up?” Ekko asked on instinct.
Jayce’s breath shook with anger; his hands tightened on Ekko’s shoulders.
“…That bastard on the council—he claims he doesn’t even remember Heimerdinger! They’ve already erased Viktor. What else do they want? Are they going to smash every statue of the Professor since Piltover’s founding? If there’s someone who should be erased from history, shouldn’t it be me?”
Moisture seeped into Ekko’s shoulder.
“Why can’t they just come at me directly?”
Jayce Talis losing control so suddenly left Ekko at a loss. The boy had never cared much for Pilties; in fact, he and Jayce barely knew each other. But Ekko could never ignore the fallen or the lost.
His gloved hand hesitated, then stiffly and awkwardly came down on Jayce’s head.
“It’s okay, Piltie. I remember Heimerdinger. I won’t forget him.”
Jayce raised his face.
Since the defense of Piltover, he had kept his rugged beard, which—apart from his reddened eyes—made it hard to read his emotions. He cupped Ekko’s face in both hands in a flustered motion, staring into the boy’s brown eyes with the desperation of someone drowning.
“Yes. Yes. Of course you wouldn’t forget. The last time I saw Professor Heimerdinger was with you.”
Ekko’s gloved hand remained on his head, steadying him. Ekko’s face resembled Mel’s in some ways; people of their heritage often had narrower facial lines, though Mel’s features were softer and finer. Jayce had never missed Mel’s enigmatic and exotic scent as sharply as he did now; if he could look into her goldleaf-flecked eyes at this moment, he might abandon all pride and rest his head in her lap without hesitation.
But the leader of the Firelights lowered his gaze, pulling out a thin, strained smile meant to comfort:
“I won’t forget, Jayce.”
“After all, Heimerdinger died because of me. You could say I killed him.”
“...Don’t you want to ask what happened?”
If Ekko had trusted the animal instinct born of the Lanes, if memory were truly as reliable as so many people believe, then in hindsight, this would have been the beginning of things turning bad.
Kneeling before him, Jayce answered:
“Let’s allow each other some secrets, Ekko. Not many of us standing here have clean hands. In Heimerdinger’s case, my guilt is probably as deep as yours.”
Why had Jayce let Ekko’s words about “Heimerdinger’s death” pass so lightly?
Jayce had already put his emotions away, his tone returning to that of a mentor. Ekko looked into his amber eyes in half-disbelief; there was nothing there but fatigue and emptiness.
Ekko didn’t understand why Jayce always showed him this inexplicable tolerance—and the more tolerant Jayce was, the more some inexpressible anger twisted in his’s chest. Was it because he supposedly ‘saved the cities’? Because he had, in desperation, smashed magic in a raw physical manner into Viktor’s head? Or was it the deeper disgust—a reaction to the well-meaning superiority Pilties extended to anyone from the Undercity?
How could Piltover’s “golden boy” ever understand? Before Heimerdinger, Ekko had lived like a hamster in a wheel, driven endlessly by invisible guilt and pressure. Only with Heimerdinger at his side could he forget for a moment, and learn to laugh without fear.
Jayce simply lowered his hands, his earlier breakdown seemingly wiped clean, and asked calmly about Ekko's progress in using the rewind rune to erase traces of the wild runes. It was the free research Jayce had assigned him—work Jayce occasionally guided with quiet precision whenever Ekko hit a bottleneck. It was as if Jayce didn’t seem to mind that, amid Piltover’s afterwar ruins, all Ekko thought about was saving a single ginkgo tree in Zaun.
“You should prepare a summary. And if you can, accelerate your research. Someone wants to hear your report next month.”
Leaving those words behind, Jayce picked up several documents from the desk and hurried out of the lab.
Ekko lifted his arms while the tape measure slid over his shoulders and waist. The tailor muttered around a pencil clamped between his teeth: “Leave some room here—you’re still growing.”
In the full-length mirror he glanced back; Jayce stood with his arms crossed, staring blankly at rolls of fabric on the shelves. Feeling Ekko’s gaze, those amber eyes shifted to meet his. Ekko coughed and looked away.
He had no idea who would be interested in his research. Jayce had revealed nothing. But the fact that Jayce had arranged for a tailor to make him a suit only strengthened Ekko’s suspicion: whatever was coming next month, it would be political theater—and he would be the prop.
“Young sir, don’t you worry. You’ll grow up to be just as imposing as Councilor Talis.”
“That reminds me, old Sam. Look at him—small for his age. If word got out I was mistreating a teenager, that would be trouble.”
“But I live at the Academy most of the time.” Ekko muttered.
“Then you should let Councilor Talis feed you more. These are your key growing years! Times are hard now, thanks to the Noxians—but before the war, oh, the choices you’d have had. I recommend the restaurant next door—the lamb stew is divine. You can’t get anything like that down in the Undercity.”
For a moment, a dark corner of Ekko’s mind pictured strangling the tailor with his soft measuring tape. You’re mature now, Ekko. Control yourself.
Jayce and Sam continued chatting about tightened postwar budgets, returning refugees, all the usual topics. Then a large, impossibly warm hand landed on Ekko’s shoulder.
“Let’s pick out fabrics, Ekko. Do you like white? Sam and I can handle the material and details, alright?”
While Jayce arrange the details, Ekko glanced out the shop window. Being handled like this, stripped of agency and treated like someone’s accessory—it made his skin crawl. It felt like it stained the promise he had made to Zaun.
Endure it, Ekko. Absorb everything you can from the Academy. When the time comes, cross the bridge and go home. Scar and the Firelights are waiting for you.
In the glass reflection, Jayce was bent over signing a check. Ekko quickly calculated whether he might sell the suit later.
Jayce draped an arm over his shoulders as they left, laughter warm above his head: “Thanks, Sam. I’ll get him something decent to eat.”
They walked in silence for several steps before Ekko brushed the hand off, trying to widen the distance. But that hand returned at once, firm and unyielding.
“About what Sam said—I’m sorry. He didn’t mean it.”
What was that supposed to mean? Ekko felt a sting rise behind his nose. Casual arrogance never hurt him; it only made him angry. But this—this odd, half-sincere concern—struck like a needle at the base of his neck. Jayce’s exhausted face, hands cupping his cheeks earlier, flashed in his mind. Ekko blinked.
Could Jayce Talis truly be… a good person?
Tbc.