Archive of Our Own

The rain muffles the sound of your bootsteps. Makes you pull your hood down lower and hunch your shoulders like you’re trying to avoid being seen even though there’s no one around to witness you.

Zaun is a ghost town, you’ve never seen it so barren. The imminent war you’ve played no small part in ushering in has proven more efficient at clearing the streets than all the Grey you’ve used combined.

The vendors’ stalls are vacant. The storefronts are closed. The streets absent of even the perennial shimmer addicts you have come to view as fixtures of this place, lining the road like free furniture. 

Everything is shuttered. Everyone gone except for you and you wonder if, after all, it isn’t your presence here that has purged this place of life.

Perhaps you are the Grey now.

_____

The rain drizzles on your hood and down your shoulders as you stand at the threshold of The Last Drop and observe the girl through its open door.

You observe the impossibly long teal hair that cascades over her small frame. Enshrouds her like a waterfall that parts in the middle to show a glimpse of what lies beneath; her dark cropped top and her pale stomach; her pants that cut off and go ragged at the knees.

She is barefoot still, and you imagine what it must have felt like to journey all the way like that from the bunker to the Undercity. Imagine shards of glass and pieces of metal puncturing her skin as she walked, trudged, stumbled to get to this place.

You wince at the thought of the bloody footprints she would have left behind if the rain hadn’t washed them away.  

She is staring at her hands.

She is staring at the grenade in her hands.

“You left without saying goodbye.” You say.

Jinx doesn’t look up at the sound of your voice. Instead she closes her eyes and shakes her head with a small, mirthless smile. Like she can’t believe the audacity of her luck. 

“Never was much good at saying goodbye.” She replies and her voice is brittle with lassitude. That familiar rasp made even more ragged by apathy. Somehow even hollower than it was before, when you spoke to her in the bunker cell.

She looks up at you now and those eyes that have haunted you in dreams and nightmares alike glow neon in the dark.

“Why are you here, Caitlyn.” She asks and your eyes flutter down as you consider. 

It is a good question. A fair question.

A question you had in fact, asked yourself.

Why are you, the commander of the forces of Piltover, here at this abandoned bar in the bowels of the Undercity as war looms on the horizon? Here, in the last moments before it all goes to hell, instead of with your troops or your lover whom you left still asleep in your bed, unconscious of your absence. 

You do not pretend to have special insight into the mysteries of this world.

You do not pretend to understand what it is that repels you from one person and draws you to another. Draws you like the red string of fate in Ionian myth that connects two souls.

The door to The Last Drop was open and through it you saw Jinx and you did not interrogate the feeling of relief in your chest that stirred at the sight of the girl still alive.

But now, you suppose, you must.

Jinx is still waiting on your response as you search your feelings, staring at you with those sullen paint-stained eyes and you wonder what you could offer her that would suffice.

The truth perhaps, pathetic as it is.

“It’s all coming to an end,” you say, “and I didn’t want to be alone.”

Her eyes widen at your honesty but then her brows furrow in confusion.

“You have Vi,”  she refutes and you almost laugh, but it would be a joyless and ugly thing and you don’t want to poison the air with the sound.

Vi.

To be with Vi is to be with someone that whispers your name like it belongs to someone else.

She sees in you things you are not sure exist; goodness and compassion and softness and hope. She thinks you moved the guards from the Hex Gates for her and you did, in a way, because you do love her. But really, you did it out of surrender. Because you were tired of being the one who gets to decide. And because you had never imagined she would stay.

But she did.

She stayed, and probably you have Jinx to thank or blame for it, for locking Vi in that cell and leaving her behind. But that meant you did not even get the privilege of knowing you had been chosen. And now Vi is one more person you are responsible for. One more innocent soul who looks to you like you can save them and it is a burden that weighs heavy on your shoulders. Worsened still by the fact that she, above all others, deserves better. Deserves better than you.

“It’s worse when I’m with her.” You confess softly and you see in Jinx’s eyes a shade of understanding.

This is what you really came here for, perhaps. To spend your last moments in the company of the only person in your life that you don’t have to pretend for. Don’t have to be strong for. To be seen as you are, not who you sicken to be.

You step out of the rain, over the threshold drawing closer but Jinx takes a slight step back, bumps into the bartop.

“Stop.” She says, raises the grenade in threat and you pause, show your empty hands, feeling strangely serene about the very real possibility that in the next moment you could die.

“Are you gonna try to stop me?” She asks. Her eyebrows tug down and she frowns in warning.

“Is that what you want?”

She blinks as though surprised by the question. Her fingers clenching on the surface of the grenade. 

“I…I want it to be over.”

You can hear, in that simple admission, the depths of exhaustion. See painted under her dim-eyed countenance a portrait of profound misery. A wash of darkling hues that are a near color-match to your own.

“I won’t stop you, if that’s what you want,” Your voice is even, calm. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to wait a while since it’s all going to be over soon anyway.”

She studies your face. Looking for the trick, the deception. Sucks in a soft, sharp breath when she doesn’t find any.

“You really think the world’s gonna end.” She says in soft awe. 

“Yes.” You say, because you do, and it is a relief to finally speak the words out loud.

Jinx clenches her jaw, looks down at her hands—at the grenade in her hands—and for a moment as her eyes flash grim you think, this is it . For a moment, as she inserts a finger into the ring of the pin you are sure this is how you die.

Not as you'd imagined before: on the battlefield from a blade in your lungs pushed so deep all you can do is sigh as the life drains out of you. 

But in the back-alleys of a place you have no right to be in, chasing a girl you should have long ago let go. 

This is how your world ends. 

Not with a whimper but a bang and you shiver, unsure if the feeling tripping down your spine is terror or release.

But then Jinx lets out a shuddering exhale and slowly she removes her finger from the pin. Lets her arms drop. Lets the tension drain out of her shoulders and you unconsciously match her, dropping yours. Release a shaky breath of your own you didn’t realize you were holding.

“What's a few more hours of waiting then, I guess.” She concedes quietly and you are surprised at the way your chest pangs in relief. 

Surprised at how much of that relief is not for the fact you yourself are still alive but that Jinx is. That you get to spend a little bit more time in the presence of a girl you used to want dead. 

_____

It's a veritable storm out there now and the air is filled with the scent of ozone and wet stone, the Undercity’s take on petrichor. 

Your cloak is tossed over the back of your seat. Your chair pulled up to the open door to hear the sibilant susurration of all those metal roofs and awnings and pipes and drains getting pelted by the downpour.

It's strangely calming being here, tucked away into this shadowed space as a few feet away nature rages.

Every once in a while, a gust will kick up and sweep a howling spray of raindrops through the door, splattering the floorboards and the tips of your boots, making them shine in the glow of the lonely street lamp. 

Jinx has her chair pulled up next to yours so you can both watch the rain through the door and you sit in odd, companionable silence, as though the two of you are merely waiting for the rain to stop before you head out and part ways. 

She’s small, tucked into herself with her feet pulled up onto the seat. Hands down by her ankles as she tosses the grenade from palm to palm like it's a ball. 

It should make you anxious but somehow you've grown accustomed to being in proximity to danger whenever you're near Jinx. Somehow you’re also confident enough in her dexterity that she won’t drop it. Not unless she means to and you know she wouldn’t. Not yet at least. She had given you her word. And perhaps it’s foolish of you to believe, but even across the constantly shifting views you’ve had of her you’ve never once considered her a liar.

“You can stay until dawn,” she had said, “no longer.” And you nodded, grateful and still surprised she had consented at all to keeping you company. Heard the unspoken implication that afterwards, she would finish what you had interrupted.

You’re unsure how she feels about you but for your part, you released your fear of her back in the commune when she could have let you die but didn’t. Released your hatred of her in the bunker when she revealed your mother’s death had been an accident. Released the burden of deciding her fate when you removed the guards from their posts.

Or so you had thought.

You had thought yourself free of her and yet here you are.

“How'd you know to find me here?” She says now, breaking the silence. 

Her voice is quiet but she’s close enough that you can catch her words even through the sound of the storm. She’s not so close your shoulders brush but near enough you can feel the heat radiating off her skin. 

She runs hot, it turns out, a not unpleasant contrast to the cold wind that whistles through the door in turns and washes over your body. 

“Lucky guess.” You reply, and it's true. She'd evaded you for months and months and in the end, you'd only found her because she’d wanted to be caught. 

You wonder if that's also true in this case. If some small part of her hadn't wanted to be found. Hadn’t wanted to be saved. If maybe there isn’t still time to reach her. 

And then you remember that time, amongst other things, is something you sorely lack.

“What will you do if the world doesn't end tomorrow?” Jinx asks, as though reading your mind and you hum in contemplation.

It is not a fantasy you have allowed yourself to indulge in. Most futures you can envision result in your sudden, grisly death on the battlefield, or with Ambessa and Viktor’s army reaching the anomaly below the Hex Gates and triggering the end of it all.

But if by some miracle it should all end differently…if by some twist of fate or luck or divine intervention you manage to live, your forces prevailing against a superior enemy…well then—

“Suppose I'll have to find some way to tell Vi what happened to you.”

Jinx makes a contemplative sound in the back of her throat.

“You could let her think I ran away.” She muses.

“And when they find your body?”

Jinx pauses her tossing. Raises the grenade and pops open the inner chamber with her thumb to show you the Hex Gem that sits at its core. 

“They won't.”

You shake your head.

“That’s no guarantee.”

“So?”

“If she sees you…if she sees you like that, she’ll be ruined.”

“Is this you trying to talk me down?“ The corner of Jinx’s mouth tugs up into a weary, sarcastic smile.

“This is me trying to make sure Vi doesn't suffer any more than she has to.”

The smirk falls away from Jinx’s face and she looks down, looks away, looks back to the rain.

“I don’t want to hurt her.” She admits quietly and the earnestness in her voice would seem sweetly childlike if not for the heaviness of the subject. 

“Then why do this at all?” You can’t stop yourself from asking.

“Because I know if I stuck around I'd find some way to hurt her worse.”

Jinx does not hesitate in her answer and the numb conviction in her voice makes you click your mouth shut. Takes you back to your meeting in the bunker.

What you saw of her then, the fight gone out of her spirit. What she said to you…” If you're here to kill me, make sure to finish the job… ”

It does not surprise you that things have turned out this way. That she has resolved to end things on her own terms. 

What surprises you is the sour stinging in your stomach at the thought of it. As though you would dispute the inevitability of this outcome despite having conceded your chance to change it.

You fold your arms over your chest. Tuck your chin in as you look down.

“Don't use the grenade at least.” You say, covering your concern with practicality. “It should be clean. When she finds you, that’s how she’ll remember you forever.”

“Hmm.” Jinx says. “Guess that ruins my Plan B. Dropping myself into a fissure deep enough that I die on impact.”

You try not to flinch as the image sketches itself in your mind. Try not to envision twisted limbs and shattered bone.

“You could take something maybe. Pentobarbital.” You suggest.

Jinx shakes her head.

“The shimmer in my blood would just burn that shit out of my body. I’d slit my wrists but I heal too quick.”

The shimmer in her blood… 

The thing that makes her eyes glow neon. Makes her skin look fae, colorless and pale. 

It’s only recently that you disabused yourself of the notion that Jinx’s strange physical appearance was the result of typical shimmer use. 

In the past, it had matched the image you’d had of her: Silco’s deranged attack dog. Heart steeped in vice and violence. Hands slick with blood. A shimmer addiction would only make sense for a person like that.

But three days in the bunker cell, eating nothing, drinking little and her eyes were still chemical-pink by the end, skin still lucent as the most exquisite porcelain. And you’d been forced to consider another explanation. That something had happened to her. Been done to her more likely. Changed her irrevocably, inside and out.

And you hated it.

You hated that it made you speculate. Made you waver.

Made you wonder how much of what she’d done to you was a result of what’d been done to her. Just another tragic happenstance that bred more misery the way carrion multiplies into maggots. 

You’d hated it. The messy uncertainty of it all.  

You wanted something clear cut. Something simple. You wanted to hate her and for her to be someone hateful in turn.

You wanted the blood on your hands to have meant something. For it to all have been for something . But all the while the questions burnt inside you.

What happened to you?

Who did that to your eyes? 

What did that to your heart? 

You want to ask now but you don’t. You don’t, because there’s no way she would answer and anyway, what would it change? 

“A bullet then.” You offer. Something clear cut. Something simple. The softest way out you can imagine that could still work. “That pistol of yours maybe. The one that works with the Hex Gem.” 

Jinx stiffens beside you.

“It’s gone.” She says and instantly you remember how. Feel yourself sucked back into a body still on the battlefield. The commune a field of flames. A tableau of chaos and carnage. You remember the sight of a small girl in a too-big helmet aiming Jinx’s gun at the beast that you’d come there to capture. The man that used to be Jinx and Vi’s father.

They’d both died, you realize. Both Jinx’s father and that little girl that Jinx had known. Had cared about, because you remember Jinx screaming the child’s name before everything went white.

“Isha,” It sounded like.

She had died.

They had both died.

“Should have brought that fancy rifle of yours,” Jinx says. “then you could just—” She puts two fingers to her head in imitation of a gun and mimes the recoil of a shot, “—pow.”

The suggestion puts you on edge, even though a few days ago you might have agreed. 

“I won’t be made complicit.” You snap and Jinx lets out a small, wry laugh.

“And you wouldn’t wanna do me the favor right?”

You frown, unsure how to respond.

It’s not unfair, that this is the image she has of you.

You’ve given her no reason to believe that there’s anything more to your being here than petty self-interest. That your consideration extends beyond needing her to be around for the next few hours.

And what difference would it make for her to know the truth?

To know it sickens you to think of her ending things out of guilt when you yourself haven’t received so much as a slap on your wrist for all the wrongs you’ve committed.

Even now you’re not sure you’ll live to see the next moonrise but if you somehow do, you think it only fair she gets to see it too.

But what difference would it make for her to know that?

You’re still the woman that tried to kill her and she’s still the girl that wants to die.

“Why didn’t you take the shot?” She asks quietly, snapping you out of your thoughts and your eyebrows knit together in confusion.

“You know why. Vi stopped me.”

Twice in fact. Back then at the cannery and later in the tunnels, in the temple. Although there was a third moment, you recall now, though there’s no way she could mean—

“I’m talking about when you gave me this.” Jinx raises her hand to show her metal finger and a jolt of alarm trips through you.

How could she have known? You think.

“I missed,” You lie.

“You don’t miss.” Jinx says. “All the time you were hunting me, I was watching you. You don’t miss.”

You unfold your leg and hunch forward with your elbows on your knees, fingers laced as you stare out at a drainpipe, the end of which is now underwater in a murky puddle of its own making.

You only have yourself to blame, you suppose, that you’d come here to be seen as you are and that’s exactly what Jinx has done.

It only makes sense that if, for all those months she was looking as hard at you as you were looking at her, she would have seen what had taken you a week to come to terms with.

That you’d had the shot.

Right then. A split second opening but plenty of time for someone of your skill.

You’d had her head lined up in your sights.

And you’d flinched.

Twitched the gun to take her finger instead.

Coward.

You hesitate in your answer but only for a moment. Only out of habit. There’s no harm in letting the truth out now, in this place. Here in the darkness at the end of all things. No one to judge you but the girl to your side and yourself, and for your part, you have already weighed your soul and found it wanting.

“I knew it wasn’t really what I wanted.” You say quietly.

“And what did you want if not me dead?” She sounds genuinely confused and almost frustratedly so.

“I wanted to know if you meant it.” You say. “If you meant to hurt me the way you had. And if I’d killed you then I never would have found out.”

It had taken you a week to come to terms with it because of what it really meant.

That all this time you had only ever been a spineless, wounded child. More selfish than vengeful. More rageful than righteous. The fire for your vendetta fueled more from your pain than your pursuit of justice.

You think the cold silence that sweeps in is because she’s contemplating your words, perhaps even judging you, but then she says, “It was never about you,” in a tone that gives you pause, frustration and bitterness thick in her voice, and you look over, see her fingers clenched tight around the grenade by her feet. See her fuschia eyes glaring out at nothing over her knees.

“You know why I did it?” Her hands are trembling. Her jaw clenched tight in a quivering frown. 

“You want to know the stupid fucking reason that everything’s shit and we’re all going to hell?”

She turns her head and looks at you now and you realize it is not you she is judging but herself. Her eyes shimmering, brimming with an overabundance of guilt. A self-loathing that is so familiar to you it’s like staring at a cast copy of yourself. Your chest crumbling inwards at the sight of her so tortured. 

“It was ‘cause my dad just died and I was so fucking miserable that I took it out on literally everybody else.” 

She sucks in a breath. Chokes down a sob and the sound makes your chest cave in on itself. You want to calm her quaking with your touch but you don’t dare reach out. Don’t dare make a move for fear of making things worse, the way you are so wont to do.

“And I hurt you…” she whispers, followed by three words that make your eyes widen. Three words you’d never ever have imagined hearing from the other girl’s mouth.

“And I'm sorry.”

_____

With a pained growl, Jinx gets up suddenly in a flurry of blue and you spring back in surprise as she stalks back into the bar, puts her hands on the counter and takes a bunch of deep ragged breaths, trying to calm herself down.

You’re on your feet before you realize. Halfway towards her before you catch yourself, realize she’s still holding a grenade.

It’s a long moment as you stand there in limbo, wondering what you should do. A long moment filled with the sound of her rough breathing, her head occasionally twitching, and the pounding of your pulse before you find the nerve to call out her name.

“Jinx…”

She looks over her shoulder at you and you see one pink pain-filled eye. Don’t know what she sees in your expression but she looks down and away. Shakes her head and some of the tension bleeds from her shoulders.

“Relax,” She says tiredly. “I’m not gonna do anything reckless .” She emphasizes the last word with a bite of bitter sarcasm. “It’s not dawn yet, I can keep it together until then.”

With a careless motion she releases the unprimed grenade on the counter and it rolls a few inches away, coming to rest on its back with its mechanical eyes facing up, blinking a somber red.

“Good.”

The floorboards creak as you make your way over. Lean in reverse position to Jinx with your back against the bartop and your arms folded. Posture easy even as a drip of adrenaline still sizzles through your veins. 

You want to say something more but it is a strange balancing act trying to appear unmoved by her imminent death even as something in you yearns for her to be saved.

In her you see something kindred. That same vicious guilt that eats at you like a toxin. Hers, evidently more proactive but the taste and scent of it is the same. Still malignant. Still terminal.

It only makes sense, you suppose, that you would be so affected at the sight of a wound whose pain you know only too well.

And really, you would dissuade her from this course of action if you thought you could but you know you have neither the right nor the rhetoric to talk her down.

Know that were it you in her place, by now you might have already pulled the pin.

Despite this, despite everything she’s put you through and might yet, you still want to get closer. Reveal more of the truth of her that you’d never gotten to see until now. 

Call it closure, call it catharsis. Call it covetousness even, the need to possess her in some way after all that time you'd spent hunting her. All those days spent hungering to have her in your clutches.

Whatever it is, these next few hours are your last chance to learn more about her, about this girl you can’t seem to let go. And perhaps in so doing, discover some way to make peace with her death and your part in it, before you march to yours.

“How do they honor the dead in Zaun?” You hear yourself ask.

Jinx’s smile is wry and doesn’t reach her tired eyes when she turns them towards you.

“You gonna pour one out for me when I’m gone, Caity?”

“‘Pour one out’?” You ask in genuine confusion, only noticing the nickname after the fact, it had sounded so natural coming from her lips.

“Do they not do that Topside? Take a shot with the dead?” 

At your bewildered expression, Jinx scoffs and then under her breath she mutters, “No wonder everyone’s so uptight.”

The sound you make is less of a laugh than a snort but it’s still a surprise to you both. Jinx’s eyebrows raise as you duck your head in embarrassment.

She tilts her head and that frozen waterfall of hair washing over her back tilts as well.

“Huh,” she says. “Never thought I’d live to see Caitlyn Kiramman laugh at one of my jokes. The end of the world sure is a trip.”

There’s something like a smile on her face. Thin as it is, sad as it is, it’s entirely too small of a thing for your heart to have stuttered as it just did. 

“If you show me how, I will,” You say, “If you show me how I’ll pour one out for you when you’re gone.”

Her eyes study your face for a long moment and then she looks away with a clenched jaw, swallowing hard.

She pushes herself off the counter and brushes by you to walk around the bar to the other side.

She roots around the low shelves and high racks looking for what, you’re not sure until she makes a small grunt of satisfaction, emerging from beneath the bar with a bottle of scotch.

Hefting it she makes her way from behind the bar to a passageway off to the side and it’s only when she’s about to disappear from sight that she turns back to you.

“You coming?” She asks.

Without hesitation, you peel off the bar and follow.

_____

Her bare feet are quiet on the stairs. Long cyan tendrils snaking down a few steps behind her, and you, a further few steps back, feeling like a clumsy giant as you descend. Boots conspicuously loud on the creaking wood as you look over her head into the swell of darkness.

There’s the chink of a chain being pulled and then sudden light washing over the space and you blink, eyes adjusting before you take it in.

It’s part living room, part kitchen, part storage closet, or something like it. A fairly sizable space but appearing smaller than it actually is, what with the way it’s so cluttered; barrels and boxes and odds and ends cramping the space; dusty pipes running along the walls and under furniture making it appear even busier.

There’s a squat black furnace in the corner. Two patchy couches and an armchair that has seen better days arranged around a rugged wooden table in the middle. And on one side of the room is an old stove flanked by metal shelves with steel utensils hanging from their lips.

Jinx snags three upturned shot glasses from a shelf and a pack of matches from an end table drawer and then makes her way over to the furnace where she gestures at you to join her.

She rests the glasses and scotch on top of a nearby barrel so she can light the furnace using the remnants of whatever was burning there last. Tosses the match in when the flame kicks up and straightens, dusting her hands.

“You’re supposed to use the good stuff.” She says retrieving the bottle of whiskey and tilting it so the label shines yellow in the light of the bare ceiling bulb.

“But honestly, I could never remember which one that is.”

She unstoppers the bottle with her teeth, spits the cork into the flames and it flares briefly from the alcohol in the fibres.

“So it goes like this…” She hands you a shot glass and picks up the remaining two, holding them upright in her palm.

“One’s for the living—” She pours out about a finger of whiskey into your glass and one of hers.

“And one’s for the dead.” She does the same to the last glass in her palm. Rests the bottle back on the barrel so she can hold a glass in either hand and then she steps up to the fire.

“And so you drink yours first—”

She knocks back her shot and you follow suit. The alcohol is a stiff burn in the back of your throat.

“And then the dead drink—” She chucks her second shot into the fire and it hisses and flares.

“And then ya say what you gotta say.” She concludes.

You frown.

“‘Say what you gotta say’?”

“You tell the dead what you want ‘em to know.” She states, as though that makes it any more obvious, and at your scrunched eyebrows she rolls her eyes and sighs.

“Here, I’ll show you.”

She drops her shot glasses onto the barrel and pours out more scotch. Knocks it back with a grimace that she holds for a long second before shaking her head and exhaling roughly.

When she gathers herself she raises her other glass as though to make a toast and her expression softly changes. The firelight dancing in the dark of her eyes as the line of her lips bends into something solemn.

“For Claggs,” she says finally. Tosses the amber liquid into the mouth of the furnace that swallows it up with a burst of heat that you feel against your exposed forearms.

“I’m sorry you’re dead because of me.”

You blink, taken aback by the tragedy of that casually said statement.

“Who was he?” You hear yourself ask and when she replies, “My brother,” your eyes widen slightly in sympathy and shock. 

“You had a brother?”

“Mmhm. Two of ‘em.”

She pours another two shots. Once more she knocks one back.

“Mylo.”

Once more she tosses the whiskey into the fire.

“Sorry you’re dead because of me.” She says.

You know you must be staring but you’re starting to reel as you piece together the scale of loss this girl has endured. Know that if her eyes were to leave the fire to look over at you she’d see a portrait of open pity and concern. Scanning her face for signs of another meltdown like she had earlier.

But that emotion she had trembled with when she spoke of Silco’s death has seemingly been tamped down. Her face slack, her eyes dim and melancholic and you let yourself study the floorboards, chewing on your lip. 

Let yourself sit with this newfound information and altered perception of the girl. A perception that has been shifting continuously ever since she saved your life back in the commune.

More and more it is becoming impossible to reconcile the image before you with the one you held in your mind when you were hunting her. More and more that sneering, laughing, cruel thing seems like a gross caricature. Seems like a mask that was worn to protect the cowering, broken child inside from a world that is all too eager to abuse small things.

“May I?” You gesture to the glass Jinx has been using for the dead and she passes it to you and you top it up, topping up her glass as well when she offers it to you.

You drink and she drinks with you. 

You clear your throat and raise the third glass to the fire.

“For Grayson,” You say. “You deserved better.”

“The old Captain?” Jinx asks and you nod. “Who was she to you?”

You wonder about that yourself. A friend? Not as such. A mentor? You had never quite reached that level even if you’d always wished it were so. 

“An inspiration.” You settle on. “She’s why I became an enforcer. I wanted to do good, like her.”

It’s probably dangerous territory, talking about an enforcer to someone with every right to hate them, but Jinx’s face doesn’t betray any bitterness. In fact she surprises you with her next words when she says, “I knew about her. Didn’t know her personally but…you could have picked a lot worse.

“For Grayson.” She echoes, nodding towards the fire. “You’ve earned your ease.”

It sounds like a recitation. Sounds like something you say when soldiers die and you wonder how many times Jinx has had to speak those words from how easy they passed through her lips.

Jinx tops up her shot glass again and fetches the third one from you, refilling it. Refills your glass as well with a slight raise of her eyebrow when you push it out towards her. 

She swallows her shot of whiskey and you follow suit. Figure it’s only fair since she drank in Grayson’s honor, even if you don’t know which name she’s going to call on next.

“Silco,” is what she ends up saying. And then, “I miss you.” In a voice soft but unwavering that makes your chest pang in a strange mix of sympathy and upset.

You hold no love for Silco in your heart.

He was a man responsible for an untold amount of pain and suffering, Undercity and Topside. A man that no doubt had much to do with Jinx’s transformation from the sweet girl Vi had once described into the savage weapon you had come to know, come to be a victim of. 

You’re not sure you have it in you to make a spoken tribute to him. Glad that Jinx doesn’t seem to expect it of you either.

Still, you know he raised her. Know from his declaration in the cannery that he had loved her, in his own way. Know all too well what losing a parent is like. What a pain like that could drive you to do. Know all too intimately that his loss aches like a gash carved wide across the girl’s chest. 

It’s an interesting tradition, you’re beginning to understand. You drink to the dead first, even before their name is uttered, even if you don’t know who they are or what they’ve done because in the end, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that there’s at least one person in the world that cared enough about them to honor them and really it’s for that person that you drink. The person you’re next to. The person you’re sharing that moment of vulnerability with. It’s a ritual that’s as much for the living as it is for the dead. Maybe moreso.

Another round of half-shots is poured.  Another flash of alcohol makes its burning way down your throat. You feel your head starting to buzz. Feel the heat flushing your chest and cheeks.

“Mom…Dad…”

Feel your eyes struggling to focus on the glass in your hand or the fire in the furnace; they keep getting drawn to the girl next to you.

“Sleep soft.”

You are no closer in coming to terms with her encroaching death. This exercise in camaraderie has brought you no catharsis. No closure. Only a deeper understanding of the picture of tragedy and suffering that is Jinx.

She has lost so many. Been visited by so much grief.

There is so much hurt inside of her, you wonder how she can even stand for the weight of it.

And you—as heartsore as it makes you to look at her—are useless to burden any of it. To offer any comfort.

All you can do is stare.

Silently taking in her long, slender bird bones and tracing-paper skin, translucent and pale. The veins showing blue at the sides of her enchanting, stained-glass eyes. The pain hidden in their depths.

Another shot. Your head tips back.

Another toss of scotch. The fire swells.

Another name. Another scar.

“Vander,” she says. “It was only for a little while but…I’m glad I got to see you again.”

This too, makes your heart ache. 

“You’ve earned your ease.” You mumble and Jinx offers you a small smile for the effort and this too…this too cuts you like a subtle knife.

She fills the glasses up again but afterwards she hesitates. The first hesitation you’ve seen her make so far and your stomach plummets as you wonder who’s passing it is that has her so affected still.

“Isha.”

Oh.

Of course.

It’s always the ones you think you could have saved.

“I’m sorry you’re…” She breaks off, folds her lip into her mouth. Shakes her head. Tries again. 

“I’m sorry I…I…” Once again her words stutter into silence. You turn your head away and your eyes water as something raw throbs miserably in your chest.

A beat later, the sound of small sniffles floats over your shoulder and you clench your free hand into a fist when Jinx finally finds the words she's looking for.

“I’ll see you soon.”

_____

There’s at least one more name left, you know. You both know, and it’s one of yours. And you can tell, by the way Jinx is fidgeting with her fingers, biting her lip, looking-at-you-not-looking-at-you, that she's waiting for you to refill the glasses. Start the ceremony. Say what you would say to your dead.

You take Jinx’s glass from her as you step up to the barrel, your pulse a solemn, heavy drum in your neck as you pick the bottle up and tilt it to catch the light. Killing time to gather yourself. 

Your hand shakes a little when you finally pour out a finger of alcohol into the three glasses. Accidentally splashing some of the liquid down the sides of two of them and on the surface of the barrel.

You hand back Jinx her glass, chuck down your own shot with a now-practiced throw and take the last one to the fire.

When you toss in the drink, the flames flicker and it’s almost as if you can feel her on the other side, turning her head towards you. Twin sapphire irises flashing somewhere in the dancing gold.

“Mother,” You say, trying and failing to keep the crack out of your voice. Trying and failing to push down the spike of pain that rises in your throat as you swallow. 

Like Jinx before you, you struggle to come up with the right thing to say. A sentiment that encapsulates all that you feel and have felt since her passing.

The funeral was months ago.

You had to do the eulogy. 

Your father was too overcome in those days to even consider it and you were now head of the house. Hence, it was your duty.

You spoke well, even though it didn't matter.

The only person whose opinion you’d ever held to heart was her and she wasn’t there. 

She had never before been so far away.

So it wouldn't have mattered then if you'd messed up…not to you…but even so.

Even through the grief still fresh as new snow—cold and asphyxiating as an icicle pierced through your throat—you’d gotten the words out all the same. 

Hadn’t made a fool of yourself in front of all those people. Said all the things you were supposed to say without crying, without stuttering.  A good Kiramman girl.

But now, here, in the cramped, smoky belly of this bar, something about this simple Undercity ritual makes it impossible to speak.  Makes her loss feel as near to you as if it happened yesterday. Present enough that it is practically physical. A solid weight you could touch if you only reached out and—

“Woah, easy.” Jinx says, hand on your stomach, fingers tugging on the back of your jacket.

You…tottered, you realize with fuzzy shock. Blink back the haze clouding your vision as you realize you’re feeling the full effect of around seven shots of whiskey on an empty stomach. Would have stumbled into the furnace if Jinx hadn’t caught you. Pulled you back. Kept you safe.

As you look into her eyes, feel your heart stutter at the anxiousness and concern that you see there, you realize you are grateful to her. 

Grateful to not be alone in this moment, with your lacerating grief.

Deeply, genuinely, grateful.

And it is that realization that punches through your insides like a rifle shot. Staggers you as harshly as if your ribs had been blasted apart. The revelation that the girl whose presence brings you true comfort in this moment is the same girl that had taken your mother away from you.

Once again, you have chosen comfort over family. Once again your sense of self has been shattered and once again it is because of Jinx.

You should hate her for it, but therein lies the problem: you can’t.

You grit your teeth as your chest constricts with pain. You fist your shirt and press in hard as though to stem the flow of blood, even though you know it is by your own hand that you are so wounded. It is by your own leave that you have arrived at this place.

You had let yourself draw too close. Let yourself become attached to the one person you shouldn’t. Know that you are damned by the fact that you don’t want to—can’t bring yourself to give up caring for her even if it means reclaiming an iota of your self-worth.

Spineless, wounded child that you are.

Selfish, failed daughter.

“Forgive me.” You say to your mother. To the blurry flame, reduced to a hazy smear of orange and gold through your tears. The flash of sapphire judging you from glowing depths.

“Forgive me.” You choke out as you bow your head. The glass in your hand slips from your fingers and cracks with a sharp sound as it hits the floor.

Forgive me for betraying you.

Forgive me for misplacing my love.

Forgive me for—

“Caitlyn.”

Jinx’s voice is close, gentle, achingly so, but you do not open your eyes, not until you feel the soft touch of her fingers on your cheek. Feel the pads of her thumbs delicately wiping away the tears trickling down your face as you stare into those sickeningly beautiful shimmer-stained eyes of hers. Those eyes like a sunset. Eyes like a siege. Filled with so much consideration that you don’t deserve. Desperately crave all the same.

“It wasn’t your fault.” She whispers. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

And it’s this that finally breaks you. Helpless to refuse the very comfort your soul has been aching for since all of this began.

You face crumples as you throw your arms around her and you cry hard into the curve of her neck. Body wracked by open mouthed, soul-deep sobs that shake your shoulders. Render you unable to do anything but wail.  

You did not cry so hard even after the funeral.

You did not cry so hard even in Vi’s arms. Stopped yourself before you could properly fall apart. A good Kiramman girl.

The way you were supposed to be.

The way you’ve tried your whole fucking life to be.

But it’s all been so much.

Too much. 

Too much everything.

The expectations. The responsibilities. The weight of every failure, every mistake, every regret gripping you by your throat and grinding you into the dirt.

It’s all too much and you can’t bear it anymore because you’re just one girl.

You’re just a girl who lost her mother and you miss her and you’re exhausted and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts and all you want now is to be held.

So you cling to Jinx and she clings back and you break down in her arms even as she holds you up.

The tears pour and pour and sting your eyes like strong liquor. Soak Jinx’s hair and shoulders and neck even as her small hands rub circles on your back. Her soft voice tries to soothe you, whispering words of apology. Words of absolution. Begging you not to blame yourself but it only makes you cry harder.

There’s so much grief and pain and loss and longing inside your head-bent, back-bowed body that you imagine it filling up your lungs like water, pouring out of you like breath. 

So much that it can’t be damned. Can’t be reasoned with.

If you could wield it like a weapon you’d be unkillable.

If it were a wound of the flesh, you’d already be dead.

You sob until nothing comes out anymore. Until you’re wrung dry and limp and quiet. Until the fire is no more than a small golden tongue casting long-distance shadows across the space.

Jinx walks you over to the patchy couch with an arm around your middle and you stumble, utterly wasted in every sense of the word.

She guides you into laying down and you collapse heavy on the cushions.

She sits down on the rugged table in front of you and tucks your hair away from your face and you mumble what, you’re not even sure. 

She cups your cheek and wipes the remnants of the tear tracks away and your eyelids flutter under her ministrations.

The fire dims to embers.

Your breathing starts to slow.

Your body feels like a gravestone. Your hand covers the one she has on your cheek. Press the warmth deeper into your skin and you are grateful to her.

Grateful for her.

You are happy she is still here.

“D’you think,” A voice asks. Tired. Longing. You're not sure whose. ”D’you think, in another world, we could have been friends?” 

The light gives way to dark and you fade into black before you can figure it out.

_____

Iron sights.

Your finger on the trigger.

A blinding burst of Hextech blue.

An unending wind of violet petals.

Half buried under rubble, your mother’s lifeless body.

Half buried under rubble, Jinx. 

Jinx.

You wake up with a start. With the sharp, sudden inhale of one jolted from a night terror. Shoulders lifting off the cushion. Blood spiked with adrenaline. Pulse pounding quick and loud in your neck. Fading images superimposed on the back of your rapidly blinking eyelids.

Jinx.

Your heart jolts again and panicked, you sit fully upright to scan the space for her.

To your relief, she is still here.

Laying down with her knees pulled up on the second threadbare couch. The one on the other side of the wooden table that rests between you. Watching you silently. Hair draped over her body like a silky azure blanket.

The worry in your chest drains out of you in stilted pangs. Your knee jerk terror giving away to the blunter, more painful reminder that her death was still imminent.

Your throat is rough from drink and sleep. Scratchy enough to match Jinx’s when you rasp out, “What time is it?” Followed by a cough as you rub your throat.

“About three in the morning.”

You’d slept for two hours then. Which meant there was only about an hour left until dawn.

Something in you shivers thinking about what might have happened if you’d overslept. What you might have awoken to and it is the first time in your life you can remember being grateful for a nightmare.

There’s a glass of water on the table that you take up and drink greedily from. You also notice she must have put a blanket around you at some point. It covers your legs and lays bunched around your hips from when you bolted upright out of the dream. 

Jinx herself doesn’t have one. She just lays curled up under the river of her hair like a small siren. One hand folded under her head, the other resting in front of her face, scratching absently at the fabric of the couch, the metal of her middle finger shining satiny in the light of the hanging bulb.

“I looked but couldn’t find you anything to eat.” She says. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” You reply and almost as an afterthought add, “Thanks…thank you.”

The words sound awkward on your tongue. Strange. If only because of who they’re directed towards. Or perhaps the nature of the situation. Know there must be some kind of cosmic irony in Jinx worrying about fetching you water and food when she herself refused to consume anything during her time as a prisoner. Your prisoner. There’s some kind of irony in there but you’re too inebriated still to philosophize about it.

There’s no headache, thankfully, but your skull is still full of fog and your mouth still feels parched so you take another lengthy gulp of water, watching Jinx’s pink eyes through the warped lens of the glass.

When you lower it her eyes flicker down as though scalded by your gaze.

An hour left, you remember.

Maybe a little more or a little less.

An hour and she’d be gone.

An hour isn’t enough to untangle all the knots of feelings swirling in your stomach and chest at the sight of her. The thought of her. 

She had drunk with you. Wept with you. Held you while you came apart. Wiped away your tears and laid you down when your legs gave out.

Kept vigil while you slept. A blanket as you dreamt. Water when you woke.

And now the thought of her leaving aches like something atrophying inside you.

Had it always been that simple?

Was that really all it had ever taken to achieve empathy?

No.

Not nearly. 

It had taken you fathoms, descending into the depths of self-loathing before you could even consider letting go of your hate.

It had taken you leagues to reach forgiveness.

The end of the world to make you come this close.

Death to push you into her arms, your tumultuous history come full circle, arriving again at its point of origin but from the opposite side. 

So much agony and animosity, struggle and vulnerability to arrive at this place.

To arrive at caring so deeply about whether she lived or died. 

And now you have but an hour left.

Less now.

Even less.

“I was thinking…” Jinx says. Her eyes flicker to yours for a moment but she can’t hold your gaze. 

“Yes?” Your fingers tighten on the couch cushion. Your heart squeezes as a naive hope rises in your chest.

“I know how I’m gonna do it.” She says and your hope plummets and shatters. Becomes shards of cynical disappointment cutting up your insides.

“There’s a bathroom on the second floor with a tub.”

Oh.

You clench your jaw. 

So that’s how it would go.

“I think there’s enough booze left in this place to knock me out. At least long enough for me to slide under and stay there.”

You had given her the idea then, when you’d passed out after those seven shots. Another one to add to the pile of your inadvertent trespasses. 

No doubt she’d need quite a lot more alcohol than you to compensate for the shimmer in her blood, but if she had already arrived at this as the answer that meant she had probably done the math.

“Might not work.” You say, your tone more apathetic than critical. The most you can manage as you try to disguise your disquiet.

“Might not.” She agrees. “Or might get lucky for once.”

She sounds almost wistful and something in your neck throbs cold and anguished at her tone. At the stark realization that this is truly what she wanted.

It occurs to you this might be the punishment for all your sundry sins.

Subject to the cosmic irony that you are now burdened with the task of caring for someone whose only mission it is to die.

It is human nature, perhaps to see a soul hanging in the balance and wonder desperately how you could save it. Snatch it from the jaws of death.

But you are not a saviour.

Yours it is not, to be the hero of this story.

Yours it is, to simply bear witness. At best, yours it might be to ease the passing.  

“I could hold you under.” You offer. The words sit bitter on your tongue even though you refuse to rescind them. 

She blinks slowly and then her eyes raise to find yours and suddenly you feel as though you are the one being scrutinized. Unfolded like so much origami. The glow of her irises like a torchlight, illuminating all your hollow spaces and secrets.

“Wouldn’t that make you complicit?” She asks.

You shake your head with a smile, too pitiful to be deemed as such, small as it is. Thin as it is.

“I already am.”

_____

Tentatively, as though already expecting rejection, she asks if you will help her prepare.

To her surprise, but not to yours, you say yes even though it will kill you.

You say yes, perhaps, because it will.

_____

You need both of your hands and the entire length of your forearms to pick all of Jinx’s hair up and sweep it over the back of the chair. 

It's a cascade of blue. A deluge of blue and you linger looking at it. Allow yourself time to take a capture of this image, a mental tintype of the scene knowing it’s something you'll never get to witness again. 

Jinx’s locks are a little dry but soft. Softer than they should be given she'd spent three days curled up on the floor of a cell. They’re tangled and knotted in some places but soft.

Soft how you’d always imagined.

In the mirror you watch your fingers card through her hair. See her fight the flutter of her eyelids. See her shiver and swallow.

“Ready?” 

“Yeah.”

And so you begin.

Pick up your scissors and get to work.

You start at the bottom, shearing off the excess locks that trail on the floor and letting them lay there. Then you gather the rest of her hair together, snipping off only a little bit of the ends at a time before letting it all fall again to observe the result. 

In this way you progress over-slowly. A futile attempt at staving off the inevitable, masquerading as meticulousness. 

Jinx doesn’t call you out on it and for that, you are grateful but every time your gaze drifts over to the mirror you see her studying you with those considering neon eyes.

You would like to think you had not been overly spoiled in your upbringing. The things you have yearned for have seldom been material. Your parents had instilled in you early an eagerness for things more abstract. Intangible. 

Expertise at one's chosen craft. 

The satisfaction of a job well done. 

A character defined by the virtues held most dear by your forebearers. 

But now this means you have always been cursed to crave that which you can never seize and in this case, that thing is time.

More time. 

Time with Jinx.

Time to uncover the soul underneath the suffering. To experience the beauty there you’ve only caught rare glimpses of in the past.

Her genuine smile.

Her sorrowless laugh.

Her hidden warmth. 

Time.

Time you do not have.

The rain has been reduced to a light pitter-patter that softly raps through the closed window of this vacant second floor room.

It’s a soothing sound that nonetheless fails to soothe as you work. Your nerves too frayed by the knowledge of what’s to come. The part you're committed to playing in it.

The blue falls away until there’s a puddle of it and then a pool. The swish and clip of your scissors is the only sound in the space as you mourn her in advance. Jinx’s hair growing shorter and shorter like a metaphor for her diminishing time. 

“What’s one thing you’ve never done that you wish you had?” She asks out of nowhere and the question makes your hands still as you’re taken by surprise.

You cannot voice the first thing that comes to mind: 

You do not say, I wish I’d visited the Undercity when I was younger. Then maybe I would have met you before it all went wrong.

You do not say this because it wouldn’t change anything and you do not want to make a difficult thing even harder.

Because when she’d said before, " Might get lucky for once, " you could hear how much she yearned for it. The chance to finally rest. 

So you search now for an answer to her question that doesn’t lie in dangerous territory. 

“I’ve never had Jericho’s.” You say simply, continuing to work on her hair. It’s to her waist now, a pretty length, but you think a shorter cut would look even better on her. An opinion that’s only partially informed by your desire to idle time.

Jinx’s eyebrows raise but a small smirk tugs at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes finding yours in the mirror.

“You’re missing out.”

“That’s what Vi said,” You reply, caught off-guard by her smile, before you realize whose name you just invoked.

You hide a wince, continue quickly, “What about you?” Loathe to upset this tremulous peacefulness, this fraught calm. 

Jinx's smile falls away into something pensive and she hums.

She says, after a while, “I’ve never been to the beach,” and now it’s your turn to raise your eyebrows.

It makes sense but it never occurred to you that the beach could be someplace exotic. 

You have memories of day-trips with your parents to the shore. Growing tanned under the open sun. Chasing crabs and getting bowled over by waves that were taller than you. Squealing in delight. Not a care in your tiny world.

Strange how these recollections appear so sharply to you now. Unearthed from your mind like buried treasure. Summoned by but a few words.

“It’s beautiful.” You murmur, a wistful smile tugging at your lips. 

I wish I could show it to you.

“Enterprise Beach up in North Piltover is especially lovely.”

I would take you there if only you asked.

“The sand is white as bone and soft as powder. The ocean there is stunning too.” 

The same color as your hair and just as enchanting.  

You run your fingers through her locks, unable to help yourself and you’re rewarded with a satisfying shiver tripping through her. A lowering of her lashes as she fights to keep her eyes from closing in pleasure.

Exquisite.

It happens almost every time you touch her, and you’ve been touching her more than necessary as you work. Your nails scratching light against her scalp as you card through her soft hair, untangling knots. A finger placed gently on her chin to tilt her face this way or that so you can see the cut from a different angle. A brush here, a caress there. The subtle collection of scraps of contact to add to your meagre pile of memories.

Her eyes go lidded or she bites her lip or she looks at you through the mirror with an expression you still haven’t quite deciphered.

“Sounds nice.” She sighs as you play with her hair and it comes out almost as a purr. Makes something flutter in your stomach that has you eager to hear more of her voice. 

“I never learned how to play the piano.” You say to keep the conversation going.

“The piano?” She cocks her head to the side and you straighten it back in mild amusement. A faint blush colors her cheeks and something squeezes and stings inside your chest.

“I was offered lessons as a child but I chose violin instead, thinking it’d be easier.” You shrug a shoulder. Smile ruefully. “I was wrong.”

“Piano’s not that hard. You could pick it up easy.” Jinx says and you blink in mild surprise.

“You know how to play?”

“There’s one in the attic. I used to sneak up there when I wanted to be alone and just kind of taught myself.”

You can believe it. She’s clever enough to figure it out and you’ve thought to yourself before that she has the hands of an artist.

Your eyes search for her fingers and you find them folded in her lap but you don’t need to see them to remember what they look like. A vision of the slender shapes comes easily to you. The slight taper at the end of the digits and the chipped polish of her nails. It’s easy to imagine them dancing across ivory keys, coaxing music out of an ancient instrument in a dusty attic.

It’s a trivial thing to render her in three dimensions, after all that time you’d spent chasing her, consumed by thoughts of her. Following sightings and rumors of sightings as ardently as any disciple. An obsession that bordered on devotion. Looking back now you realize you had even built a shrine. An altar of sorts, dedicated to everything you had learned about her, everything you had known.

Ironic that the things you’ve discovered in this one night dwarf all the research you’d scrounged together in the past. A few hours of conversation providing more information than months of zealous toil.

“I’ve never had a pet. Always thought a powder-monkey would have made a good buddy.”

“We had hounds for a little while but it turned out Father was allergic so that was a short-lived experience.”

You trade ‘ I’ve never’s ’ back and forth like classmates on a school trip. Little pieces of trivia about yourselves. Places you wished you’d made the time to see. Things you’d wished you had given a go but stopped yourselves for reasons that seem so trifling now.

It seems to help put Jinx at ease but for you, it’s an exercise in masochism.

The more you speak the more it hurts. A bruise throbbing harsh across your ribs whenever something you say brings out that broken smile of hers. A twist in your guts whenever she graces you with an offhand compliment. A spike in your throat that pricks sharper and sharper as you discover all the ways in which you’re so similar. All the intriguing areas that you differ. 

You keep envisioning little snapshots from an alternate world. Mental dioramas of what-could-have-beens. Each scene like a pane of stained glass in a beautiful mosaic that will never be real. 

“I’ve never let anyone cut my hair before you.” Jinx says with a hint of wonder, as though taken aback by the revelation. “Except my…mom…I think…”

The silence slowly stretches after this declaration, and there have been lulls in the conversation before but this one carries a particular heaviness to it. A weight that hangs precariously overhead like a sagging, rain sodden ceiling.

She’s looking at you in the mirror now, chewing on her lip as though she’s worried about triggering you with the subject matter and it is yet another sweet irony that scrapes your insides raw.

You twine one of her locks around a finger and in the gentlest tone you can manage you ask, “Do you ever visit her?”

She stiffens a little and you feel it through your hands. Curse yourself for the greed of your curiosity.

“Be kind of hard to. They slid her body into the Pilt. Both her and my dad.”

It’s said so casually but it’s another one of those gut-punch statements that leaves you winded and heartsore. You feel miserable for even bringing it up.

“I’m so sorry, Jinx.”

She shakes her head, smiles sadly down at her hands.

“Nah don’t be. Most of the dead in the Undercity wind up in the Pilt one way or the other. That, or they get sent down to The Cracks.”

In the mirror you see her picking at the tiny bit of paint that remains on her nails.

“They fire up the crematorium once a week and then all the bodies they have on ice get turned to dust. It costs extra to get put in a fancy little urn but they say the crematorium just scoops up whoever’s ashes and gives that to you so you don’t even know who you’re getting.”

Her sad smile takes a cynical twist and she chuckles darkly.

“Water or fire. Those are the options you get in the Undercity. Either way, you disappear.”

The way she says it, even through her grim nonchalance, you can tell neither option holds much appeal and you chew your cheek as a thought comes to you. Hesitate as you consider the best way to voice your suggestion.

“The Kiramman plot is…expansive.” You say carefully. “If you wanted, you could be laid to rest there, then Vi would be able to come visit you.” After a beat, you softly add, “And so could I.”

A suite of emotions rolls across Jinx’s face as she finds your gaze in the mirror. Her brows lift in shock, then lower into a scowl of disbelief before they finally furrow together in confusion when she realizes you’re being serious and then her gaze drops to her lap. Her fists clench. 

“Why?” She asks, voice small and unsure and it breaks your heart that after everything, she still has no idea what to do when offered a kindness. Still does not think she deserves it even, in death.

The lump in your throat that you’ve been fighting back this whole time porcupines painfully but you swallow it down. Swallow it back with the tears threatening to break free. 

Now is not the time for you to come apart. This moment isn’t about you no matter how much it feels like you’re bleeding out.

You inhale a steeling breath. Come around to kneel in front of her. Face those fuschia eyes that never fail to stagger you. Ensorcell you.

Tentatively you cup her cheek. Softly you say the words that you think might soothe her, only the merest reflection of the feelings that have been building in you this whole night. 

“You’ve earned your ease, Jinx.”

She inhales sharply as though wounded. Bows her head and her cyan locks shift and you blink as you take in the length of her hair. Stomach dropping with cold shock at the realization that you had somehow finished your task without noticing. 

Just like that, the little time you had is now up.

No more shared secrets. No more scraps of revelation. No more ‘I’ve never’s’. Everything you’ve been given is everything you’ll ever have and that…that has to be enough.

You withdraw your hand, brushing aside a few locks to tuck behind her ear before you rest it on your knee.

“You’re all done.” You whisper. Disguise your sorrow with a watery smile.

Already you miss the warmth of her skin. Ache for it to scald you just one more time.

You shift to her side still kneeling and you both look in the mirror, observing your handiwork.

That one flip of hair that falls across the side of her face is now trimmed back so it just barely grazes her jaw and the rest of her locks lie in loose waves with their oceanic tint falling feather soft against her neck. Just a few inches from gracing her pale shoulders. 

She’s–

“Perfect.” You say quietly and she closes her eyes and her face twists like she’s in pain. A single tear squeezes out from under a lid and trails down her cheek. Drips onto her lap.

When she opens her eyes again they’re wet and dark and filled with an emotion that’s so big you can’t even make out the shape of it. Can’t put a name to it even though it snatches the breath from your lungs. Threatens to capsize you with its intensity. 

She's looking at you in the mirror. Turns her head and you turn yours too so now you're facing each other in the real. Her gaze flashes down to your lips as she bites her own and your pulse picks up in your neck.

“Caitlyn,” She says, or more like breathes out. “I…” She trails off, looks away, hesitant.

Your fingertips find her jaw. Guide her back to facing you. Desperate for her to finish her sentence. Desperate to be given just a bit more.

“Tell me.” 

“I’ve never…I’ve never kissed someone.”

You tip forward without another word.

It’s chaste.

So chaste.

The merest press of your lips, a little chaffed, to hers, somewhat chapped, and yet it lights you up from the inside like a swallowed coal.

The hitch of her breath is like alcohol poured on the flame burning in your stomach.

Desire growing in your chest. Heat climbing up your neck.

It takes everything in you not to seek more. Everything in you not to cup the back of her head and press in nearer and take, knowing that this kiss is the first and last of its kind.

But it is a selfish desire. A cowardly attempt at holding tight to someone who has already made plain that they refuse to stay and you do not want to make an already difficult thing impossible.

So tonight, you who have always been selfish, will put yourself last.

You who have always been a coward, will choose to be brave.

It takes everything in you but you part your lips from hers, turn your head away.

You break the kiss. 

Break the moment.

Break your own heart.

_____

You walk a little behind her and to her side. Palms cold and damp with sweat. Heart howling behind your ribs. Bootsteps echoing in the hallway, hollow as your insides as you march with her towards the end. 

You couldn't look at her, after the kiss. 

Knew you would be unable to bear the temptation of her lips if you did and it was an excruciating eternity of waiting, of you tense and tucked in on yourself before she got up. Before you could lift your eyes to track her as she made her way to the door.

She paused with her hand on the knob, half turned her head back towards you and said, “Thank you. I’m glad it’s you.” Hasn’t looked at you since.

Hasn’t given away a single sign of second-guessing in her bearing.

No hesitation in the set of her shoulders or on her face. Her expression blank, almost serene from what you can see from your angle.

She doesn’t look at you now as she stands in front of the door to the bathroom and you have to uncouple your consciousness from your body just so you’re not ravaged by the emotions threatening to explode from your ribcage.

Have to cut your mind loose from reality just so you don’t crumble to your knees, sobbing, begging her to stop. To stay. All the while knowing she won’t. 

Everything goes quieter as you dissociate. Everything desaturates as you submit yourself to the hushed numbness of the void.

Your heart pounds with a sickly staccato still but it reaches you now like a drumbeat over a distant hill.

The sweat trickling down your back is as a cold wind felt through a thick coat.

The tremor in your clenched fist is someone else’s tremor.

The anguish in your broken chest is someone else’s wound.

You inhale deep and exhale quiet as you watch her hand reach towards the knob as you remind yourself the girl before you is not yours to save.

She is not yours.

She is not yours.

She is not yours.

_____

The door swings open and the first thing you see is yourself. 

Your sober, solemn, stricken face looking back at you from the silver portal of the mirror that hangs over the porcelain sink and you quickly avert your eyes.

Mutely you take in the room. The window positioned on one side letting in dusky dawn light that washes everything in muted blues. The tiled shower on the other side that becomes a tub at the bottom.

The strange coffin where you will lay her to rest, the girl that is not yours.

Already she seems like a small ghost as she soundlessly leaves you to stand in front of the shower.

She turns her head back a little like before, as though she wants to say something then. Then she looks forward again. Looks down. Pauses, only for a moment, and then wordlessly starts to strip.

Her pants come off first, a quick undoing of a few buckles and they drop to the floor along with her belts, your eyes following suit.

You shouldn’t look. Should avert your gaze. Pin it to the floor, but you can’t. Your eyes betray you the second they catch sight of that sinuous cloud tattoo wrapped around a small calf. 

Heat rises in your neck as your traitorous eyes go on to trace the powder blue shapes. Up and over the back of her thigh. then across the bony flare of her hip. Greedily follow the pattern, gliding up to her side just in time to see her slender fingers tugging on her top. Pulling it over her head in a smooth motion.

She stands naked in front of you and you devour the sight of her bare back. The planes and curves of her pronounced shoulder blades. The merest glimpse of the slip of her nape before it’s obscured by downy cyan strands. 

Every part of her designed so carefully, so fine, and something aches sharply inside you as you take in the entirety of her. Every scar and freckle. Every inch of milky skin illuminated softly in the pale light of dawn. 

She is perfect.

You feel the grip you have on your detachment wavering like vapour over a sun-scorched road. Feel yourself tugged towards her by an invisible cord.

You catch sight of your face in the mirror. Catch the dark of your pupils expanded to their fullest under lowered lids. Jaw clenched tight in quiet hunger.

Jinx does not see you.

She tugs aside the shower curtain and the rings squeal harsh against the steel rod.

She turns on the faucet and the water bursts out in a vicious, hissing torrent.

She pushes her palm out, lets it batter her skin. Testing the temperature, you imagine, or going through the motions of doing so.

She steps over the wall of the tub, into the shower, into the spray, bows her head as though in prayer and all of this you watch unmoving until she wraps her arms around her body. Until she slowly turns to face you.

And there. 

You see it now in her eyes and it makes your heart stutter. 

That thing swimming in the center of the darks that you couldn’t decipher before. Couldn't fathom. Couldn't hope for. 

Pleading.

And for what, you don’t know. And for who, you can’t imagine. But there’s no one else here. No one else left. All there is now is you, so that is what you offer.

You walk over to her.

Her small hands grip your jacket, tug you weakly into the shower with her and you let her. Let her pull you under the water fully-clothed.

She presses herself to your front, still fisting your jacket. Presses her face into your chest and you wrap your arms around her slight frame, drawing her closer.

She looks up at you and you feel yourself return to your body. Desperate to be present in this moment with her. Knowing you need to hold this image in your heart until you die.

You must remember everything about the next moments for the rest of your short life, carrying it with you onto the battlefield like a talisman. Like a locket pressed against your chest. Like a photograph set between the pages of a holy book and tucked into your shirt.

You will imprint into your memory the way your clothing clings to you soaked. Her sunset eyes, at once wide and lidded. Her furrowed eyebrows. The pleading on her face that is now so much closer to the surface.

The way you cup her cheek and she pushes her face into your palm, goes on tiptoe so she can press her mouth to yours, trapping water between your lips.

The spray from the showerhead is lukewarm but the heat of her slick skin scalds you ever so sweetly. The press of her small body makes you dizzy with want.

She lets out something like a sigh and without thinking, your tongue flicks out to scout between her lips. Finds the tip of her tongue and the meeting is accompanied by a pinprick of pleasure that makes you gasp.

Her hands go to your chest, raise to your neck, cradling your throat for a moment before moving to push your jacket off and you roll your shoulders, helping her peel it off you until you can throw it somewhere behind you where it lands with a wet slap.

Your mouth hasn’t left hers.

She tastes like rainwater and cheap scotch.

Like bad things done for good reasons.

Like heat simmering deep in your core. Sinful and sweet. 

You break the kiss so you can step back a little. Scrunch up your shirt from the bottom and rip it off you in a fierce, quick motion so it doesn’t get caught on your face. Toss it backwards so it can join your jacket on the floor and now you’re left bare from the waist up, gazing at her as she gazes at you. Her face sick with desire as you’re certain yours is.

She swallows and you watch her stomach clench.

You step forward and her eyes go to your mouth.

“Caitlyn,” she breathes and her eyelids flutter and she looks down, suddenly bashful. “I haven’t…I’ve never…”

You pause, eyes widening as you parse what she’s saying. Heart squeezing tight in your chest as you realize what she would offer you. The gravity of it tempering your desire just enough for you to consider what your response should be.

You cup her wet cheek and wait until she looks up at you before you continue. 

“Do you want to?” You murmur. “With me?”

You hold her gaze so she can see in your eyes what exactly it is you would give her in return and you watch her pupils expand as she does.

“Please.” She says and the need in that rasp mirrors the need in those violet eyes and all of it rips through you, cutting through your self-control like a claw through cloth.

You surge into her like a bullet.

Your lips meet again and again. Tongues and teeth. Fervor and need. Arms around her hips. Hands around your neck. Soaked skin and wet clothes. Her hunger yielding to your thirst until you have her pinned to the shower wall, outside of the spray, with your hands on her waist and your knee between her thighs.

She moans into your mouth and the sound goes straight through you. Lights you up from the inside with a sparkling, shivering heat.

She breaks the kiss, head tipping back against the wall. Grinds down on your thigh with a whimper and you imagine how good that slickness would feel on your bare skin instead of your clothed knee. Don’t need to touch with your fingers to feel the answering rush of wetness between your own thighs.

She reaches up and tugs your hair down from its ponytail, tossing the elastic band out of the shower as your indigo locks fall limp across your shoulders and back.

You press her into your thigh again and she rewards you with a reedy exhale. Lets her hands fall to their sides as she rolls her hips against you with a look so open and needy it robs you of your breath. 

You need more.

You’ve never been so starved in your life.

You press your mouth to the tattoo on her neck. Close your teeth around the skin. Lap at her pulse. Taste the groan she makes as it rumbles through her throat.

You lick the water from her neck. Pick her up with your arms around her thighs so you can lift her higher. Continue the path you were making with your mouth down to her chest as she sighs. Wraps her legs around your waist. Presses her slick heat into your stomach and you clench around nothing with a hiss.

Turning your head to one of her small breasts you give in to the impulse to bite down. Hard. Harder. Waiting for her to cry out in pain or push at you letting you know to stop but she only moans more. Higher. Shudders under you until you pull back before you break the skin. You stare up at her in dizzy awe as she gazes back at you. Bares herself to you more with the subtlest arch of her spine. 

Your eyes drop down to her breast. To where your bite mark glares red like a brand.

You could have her however you want, you realize. And she would let you.

You could take her hard and fast and vicious and bruising right here against the wall of this shower, right there on the floor. And she would let you.

A wave of dark urges and wanton thoughts rushes through you but they're subsumed just as quickly by something else. An even more primal impulse to be gentle.

If she would give herself to you then you would have her like she's yours.

The way she deserved.

You kiss the mark on her breast in soft apology.

Free one of your hands to palm her other breast. Squeezing gently as you lave at her nipple with your tongue.

The way she whimpers and squirms under your mouth makes you throb. Makes you ache.

You pull back to scrape your nails down her stomach and the sound she makes is soft and wanton. Sends a surge of electrifying need tripping through you.

You cup her mound and she rolls her hips into your hand. You slip a finger through her slick folds and find her entrance. Press in just the tip and she gasps rough. The most exquisite expression blossoming on her face, brows furrowed like she can’t quite understand what’s happening to her. Eyes locked on yours like they hold the answer.

You push in easy, she’s so wet, sliding forward inch by slow inch until you’re hilted. Relish the feel of her heat gripping you tight. Her legs tightening around you to pull you deeper.

Then you move, and from the way she mewls softly, the way you glide through her so easy, it’s clear she can take more. Needs more. And all you want is to give it to her.

Her palm presses to your sternum when you add a second finger, nails digging in and you moan in pleasure.

You’re mesmerized by the sight of her tight wet frame. The way her small breasts shudder with each pump of your hand. The way all of her rolls up and down the shower wall as you push into her again and again. 

“Gods…” You breathe. ”You're so beautiful.” And you’re rewarded by her slurring your name in a ragged exhale. 

When her eyes squeeze shut, when her fluttering becomes unpaced, you know she’s close. 

You don’t tease her. Because she is yours. And because all you can think about is how badly you need to see her come undone.

You crook your fingers and her eyes snap open and you fall headfirst into twin pools of pale pink with a gasp. Understand for the first time how people become addicted to shimmer.

You press your thumb into her clit and she clenches around you so tight you don’t think you can pull out and you realize that this...this is the way your world ends.

With a strangled, open-mouthed cry.

Neck muscles straining in a porcelain pale neck.

Inked clouds freezing on the tundra of a taut stomach as you marvel at the fact that you know now what it means to feel her shatter from inside. 

She comes shaking on your fingers and you gaze at her in unblinking awe. Helpless to do anything but try to burn the moment into your mind.

It lasts forever and it’s over too soon. 

Her eyelids flutter shut as she slumps against the shower wall. Head tilted into tile. Lips parted, panting shallow. Shivering from the aftershocks.

She whines when you slowly remove your hand and the sound makes your stomach twist bittersweet.

You turn the faucet off as you let her come down and the quiet that swoops in is a loud contrast to the previous hissing of the spray. Only serves to further highlight that the end is here.

That your time is up.

You wait for her to tell you what happens now.

Because you don’t know.

All you know is you will grant her whatever she asks of you.

That wherever she goes next you will follow.

Pink rivulets stream from the corners of her eyes and your stomach sinks.

Her lip folds into her mouth as her face crumples into something pained and she cries quietly in the most heartbreaking way possible.

You take the hand pressed to your chest in your own. Grip it tight like if you just wished for it hard enough you could show her all the desperate feelings churning inside your heart.

Then she could see, as with a seventh sense, all that trembled within you. All the yearning, the want, and that other, terrifying, emotion storming through your chest. The one you dare not name for fear of the gravity inherent in its naming. 

But it blazes still, that frightful feeling, like some kind of beautiful curse. The earth shattering truth that your world is made more precious for having her in it.

You can see her fighting something inside herself before she forces herself to meet your gaze. Opens her mouth and rocks you with her next words.

“If you tell me to stay,” She says. “I’ll stay.”

Your tears come unbidden. You make a sound that’s part sob, part laugh as you sag, staggered from relief. The relief you had yearned for this whole night springing up in you suddenly like a sparkling, sunlit geyser. You press your forehead to hers. Dumbstruck for just a moment at the depth of gratitude you feel at being given the one thing you had begged for. Prayed for. 

Time. More time.

The rest of your time, with her.   

“Stay,” you beg her. Because you understand now. What you came here for. Who you came here for.

Forget the war. Forget the world. Forget air and light and food.

“I need you,” You say. “So stay.”