all the hues of you - adoringsteve (2025)

Ekko doesn’t know how he does it, but he gets Jinx to listen to him for more than a couple of seconds. He tells her about a dream he had. A dream where everything had been different, but everything had been better. He tells her of a dream where she was good, where she was happy, where she was everything she never thought she could ever be.

For some reason, she listens. She doesn’t have to, she could keep this loop of killing herself and him going back to save her going infinitely, but she doesn’t. She stands there, at the ledge, and she listens to him, the monkey bomb already fallen out of her grasp a long time ago.

Ekko talks, and she listens, and she says she’ll help him fight this war.

Ekko can’t help the laugh of disbelief that leaves his body, can’t help the way all his taut muscles fall limp, can’t help the laughs that turn to sobs, because he had her and he lost her, and maybe if he does this right, he can have her within reach once again. If they win, if they live, if Jinx decides that she’s allowed a life, things can be okay again.

Jinx doesn’t say anything about his weird little meltdown, only instructs him to help her get the basics. Which ends up being a wheelbarrow full of random shit he can’t even begin to explain. A mirage of weaponry, scissors, a pair of steel toed boots, and a bunch of other stuff he can’t begin to point out. She makes him lug it halfway across Zaun to the Firelights’ hideout, because if this plan works, they’re going to need more than two hands. (He doesn’t say that he can’t keep sitting there in her hideout because if he has to look at her standing in the same place where she killed herself so many times he might fucking puke.)

There aren’t many people out on the streets, Ekko notices, as he lugs Jinx’s haul of shit. He’s not quite up to date on everything since, you know, the whole traversing through alternate timelines and whatever, but a lot of people have evacuated. Those who haven’t have already gone topside, trying to learn war tactics like they haven’t been fighting every single day of their lives in the undercity. Those who don’t do either stay inside the homes they have, trying to find the place between peace and fear which doesn’t really exist.

Ekko hopes that their plan works. That things change. And if they don’t, he’s prepared to go back and redo things over and over again until his body gives out.

They walk silently, because even though there’s hours of lost conversation between them, Ekko feels like he’s forgotten how to talk. He doesn’t know what to say, what’ll set her off or not, and he has this feeling like if he looks back at her, he might just start crying. Her hair’s the same length as Other-Powder’s was but the look in her eyes is different. So drastically different, yet so similar all the same. It makes sense, that girl was just another her.

The thing is, he loves them all the same. Other-Powder. The Powder from his memories. Jinx, even if sometimes he wishes he didn’t.

Jinx doesn’t talk either, even if he remembers that she used to always try and fill the silence with awkward conversation. Probably too lost in her own head. Those are two things that haven’t quite changed.

It dawns on him now that maybe she hasn’t changed as much as he thought. She’s different, everyone is, but the girl he used to know is still in her. Ekko just has to relearn the things he thought he knew. He has to learn the things he used to never want to know.

After a long walk, his arms burning as he lugs her wheelbarrow full of stuff, they finally walk through one of the lower pipes that lead into what he calls home.

Behind him, Jinx wolf-whistles at the image laid before them, “You live here?”

“I built this.” Because he had. With a handful of others, some still here, some not. (Some dead, some in Stillwater. Some just gone because that’s what happened to people in the undercity. Sometimes they just disappeared and no one knew why.)

This is the place I wanted to bring you to all those years ago, when I finally found you again is what he doesn’t say.

What he does say is this, as he half-turns, to see her face, “I’ve always wanted to bring you here.” A quiet confession. Baring his soul because this is his, entirely his, and the murals before them say everything he never can.

And he sees Jinx finally lay her eyes on them. The murals. Of her, of Vi, of all the people they’ve lost. That Zaun’s lost.

“That’s…” Her voice is quiet, broken, “Me.”

“I thought you were dead for a long time,” Ekko says softly, because that day, when he finally happened upon the wreck of the cannery that Vi told him about, everyone was all gone. The building went up into flames, and he was too frightened to try and look through the ruins. But everyone he knew and loved had left, and he was all alone. Looking at its wreckage, Ekko knew that no one had been able to survive that blast.

But Jinx popped up two years later, and Ekko knew she was alive, but no longer the girl he knew.

Ekko had lived a very long time thinking he had lost everything. He still sometimes thinks he had that day. Even if Jinx stands beside him. Even if Vi is alive up topside. He still feels so alone.

Jinx skips up ahead of him, standing atop some of the planks used as steps to reach higher on the wall, her fingers daintily tracing the lines of Vi’s portrait. He forces his eyes away from her and takes a look around. The usual hustle and bustle of the Firelights is dimmed, and there aren’t many people bumbling around.

Ekko’s eyes catch onto Scar’s, who jogs lightly with his eyes widened, his low tone gravely as he says, “I thought you were dead.”

“Can’t get rid of me too easily,” he says softly, but he knows he can’t really explain himself to anyone other than Jinx. (Or, well, Jayce, but Ekko doesn’t even know where the hell he went when the Hexcore transported them.) Anyone else would think he’d gone crazy.

Scar gets straight to the point, “Topside’s going to war.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ekko says, “And, we’re going to help them. How many people evacuated?”

“Mostly just kids,” Scar says, and that’s why it’s so quiet. “Even without you here, we’ve been getting prepared to help. Firelights or not.” He tilts her head towards Jinx who is still looking at the mural, examining every portrait. The air grows tense, and the animosity towards Jinx isn’t exactly gone within the Firelights, since they’ve been fighting for so long, but after Silco’s death… opinions of her changed. She was a symbol in Zaun, and even the Firelights weren’t immune. “What about her?”

“I’ll deal with her. I brought her here, convinced her to help.”

“You got a plan?”

“You know it.” He bumps his shoulder with Scar’s, and tugs on the wheelbarrow. He begins pulling it up the wooden staircase, which is an awkward endeavour, but it works. Jinx, startled by the noise, looks at him. He jerks his head, signaling for her to follow, and she does. He has to walk up the stairs backwards, and tries not to look Jinx in the eyes. She looks… better than when he found her at the ledge, but she’s ruminating still. Her eyes, no longer hopeless at least, are still fucking full of sadness.

Ekko brings her to the highest level of what’s essentially a treehouse where his room is. The rooms below his are mostly workshops, a kitchen here and there, and bathrooms. They need a lot of space to work to mass produce the hoverboards and other weapons they use. His space is humble, not really larger than the room he had back at Benzo’s, but undoubtedly his. Paintings mark the walls, stuff that was good enough to be immortalized in paint. Blueprints litter the floor, bits and bobs over any tabletop, and a clock he made himself tick tick ticking. He has a hammock swinging from a corner, which is as much luxury as he lets himself deserve.

“Careful,” He warns as he deposits the wheelbarrow next to his personal workbench.

“Think I’m going to break something?” Jinx asks, condescendingly, but Ekko doesn’t know if the tone is meant for him or for herself. “Like I always do,” She adds under her breath.

“What? No. I just have open paint cans lying around here.” It’s not the healthiest thing, but no one ever claimed Ekko to be an organized or clean person. He sits onto his unmade bed, watching as Jinx takes in his space, her fingers trailing over some of the portraits on the walls. There’s none of her in here, because those take up space in the notebooks spread sporadically around. Portraits of their shared youth, portraits of their diverged adolescence. Pages upon pages, multiple notebooks filled. He’d probably pass out if she opened one up. She takes her time moosing around, and he lets her even if they are kind of on a time crunch. (He just watched her kill herself, and he can count the times. They are burned into his brain. Every time he blinks, he’s scared that when he opens his eyes she’s going to pull another pin or jump from another ledge. Any moment that is a good moment is a moment worth savoring. Any moment where she is here and within arm’s reach is a moment worth keeping. Any moment where she looks happy, where her eyes fill with wonder, where her lips quirk up into a sarcastic smirk is a moment worth the fucking world.)

Jinx tuts, clicking her tongue as she hauls her minigun out of the wheelbarrow onto his workbench. She doesn’t begin working on it immediately, and instead continues depositing the contents of the wheelbarrow all over his space. It’s… weird having her here, but it feels nice seeing her stuff mingle with his. It almost feels like she belongs here. Reminds him of their childhood where his junk and her junk could never be told apart when they were tinkering.

Ekko’s always missed her, but it was always easier to forget the sadness and hold onto the anger. He can’t here, in this space, where it feels like they might be the only two in the world.

She pulls out more work tools, placing them sporadically over the workbench. The pair of scissors gets pulled out, but stays in her hands, as she eyes the steel-toed boots with excitement in her eyes. She has some ideas about everything, it’s clear.

Jinx begins snipping at her hair, pulling at the shoulder-length strands and cutting them erratically close to her scalp.

Right as she grabs another strip of hair to snip, Ekko speaks up, “I, uh, have a razor if you want to shave it.”

“When’d you learn how to shave, little man?” Jinx laughs, the childhood nickname slipping out of her mouth, tinged with wrongness. The people they are now aren’t supposed to have loving nicknames for each other. It feels like a shot to the heart. She hasn’t called him that since the day their lives changed, paths diverged. The nicknames she gives him now are condescending, dripped with poison, meant to hurt.

(Little Man because he was short and skinny. Little Man because when he first met Benzo, he had called Ekko a little ole thing, had called him his little man, and it just stuck. Little Man because he’ll never know why, because Benzo is fucking dead.)

Jinx notices the slip, and she doesn’t face him as she waits for his reply. Her hands are still in the air. One wrapped around the base of the scissors, the other in her hair.

“People grow up,” Ekko says softly. The truth is that some older boys had shown him when he was just turning into a teenager. They had taught him how to care for his hair, because Benzo had tried, but he didn’t really know how. They told him what to use, what undercity products were cheap but couldn’t ruin his hair. How to shave his face, how to shave his hair to keep it looking good. They had loc’d up his hair due to his insistence over it, and had taught him how to retwist it.

Ekko still doesn’t know how to do much further than shaving, retwisting and washing, but it’s more than he had when he was young.

“No, thanks,” She says anyway, “I like the… uneven look.”

“Let me help you with it at least,” He insists. Even though Vander’s unpracticed hands had cut Jinx’s hair when she was young, she had that uneven length look back then too. Powder, not his, never his, also did. Choppy little bangs, and a choppy bob. What she wants will suit her, Ekko knows it will. She’s always been able to pull off what others couldn’t.

(What she always thought she never could too.)

Jinx tilts her head, humming a tune as she pretends to think, her back still facing him. In a swift moment, she turns to face him and then plops down next to him on his bed, “Yeah, whatever,” She says as she hands him the scissors.

Ekko rolls his eyes, playfully. Lovingly. It almost feels like things are normal between them. Like they haven’t been fighting each other for years. Like they haven’t tried killing each other before. It feels new, and special, and something fragile that Ekko wants to cradle between his fingers. (He knows how to keep things safe. He knows how to build things. He knows how to destroy them too.)

This, their relationship, is something he has been deconstructing for a very long time. He wants to build it back up, piece by shattered piece. No matter how long it may take.

The scissors are dulled, which makes the choppy look easier to achieve, but makes it harder to actually cut Jinx’s hair. The sound of scissors cutting through hair echoes through the room, a silence that feels suffocating and yet comforting encapsulates them. Ekko, despite being able to talk Jinx off a ledge earlier, doesn’t know how to fill this silence. It’s been years since their last civil conversation before this day, and their first talk since their fight on the bridge had been full of desperation. Full of longing, full of fear.

He works quickly but delicately, each piece of hair a quarter inch to a full inch left in length. Something he unintelligently forgot was the fact that cutting her hair meant it was going to get everywhere. Bits of bright blue hair fall down the back of her neck, getting stuck to her tacky skin, and her clothing. It falls onto his clothes, onto his bed, gets stuck in his bedsheets and he knows that for weeks he’ll be finding traces of her all over. Blue hair under his bed, under his pillow, nestled between his sheets.

Ekko leaves some hair longer around her nape, smiling to himself as it curls upwards itself.

Jinx can’t quite keep still, fidgeting while he cuts her hair. It doesn’t bother him since he doesn’t have to really worry if he’s cutting her hair too short. She rocks side to side, plays with her hands, goes from sitting criss-cross to pulling her knees close to her chest to throwing her legs outward in front of her and kicking them in the air.

“There you go,” Ekko whispers as he finishes snipping away, leaving her long front bang to be dealt with last. Watches as a longer strand curls, following the shape of her ear.

Jinx turns to face him, sits criss-cross, and stares into his eyes. Her eye makeup is smeared against her cheeks still, though looking marginally better than when he first found her. Her long band sticks out, a little out of place but somehow still fitting. Most of her hair is shorn close to her head, choppy, with a few longer curling pieces around her face, ears, and neck. It suits her well, even if it truthfully shouldn’t. “How do I look? Like a girl who's fully lost it?”

Beautiful, Ekko’s mind supplements.

“Great,” Ekko lands on instead. Jinx scrunches up her face, in embarrassment or happiness or whatever else, he doesn’t know. “What about your bangs?” He asks, “Want to do anything with it?”

Jinx taps her fingers against Ekko’s bed as she looks around his bedroom, dried blood caked around her cuticles from where she had been picking all throughout the conversation that solidified this timeline. Where Ekko had explained, and where she had listened. And had believed him.

Her eyes wander around before stopping on a few paint buckets and spray paint cans tucked haphazardly out of the way, a mischievous smile growing on her face. The smile she was wearing was soft, so unlike the smile he had gotten used to over the years. The smile that was deadly, that meant chaos and destruction were imminent.

“I have an idea,” She sing-songed, jumping up to grab the cans of spray paint. She juggled them, wincing as one fell out of her unpracticed hands, and hit the ground with a thud. The sight and sound of it falling makes her falter, her smile twitching and her movements stilling. Her mental state was fragile, (and it seemed like it always had been. An oversight he had never seen, or maybe an oversight he willingly ignored before— when they were still enemies. When he had every reason to want her dead.) and even a little mishap like this seemed to set her off.

Ekko smoothly got up, the Z-Drive a comforting weight against his waist, he scooped up the stray paint can she dropped, “Yeah? What is it?”

Jinx’s face straightened out, and she talked as she walked towards his workbench again, “Grab those paint buckets and you’ll see.”

Ekko obliged, grabbing a paint can in both hands. One was nearly empty, another half-full. Pink and green. He set them atop the workspace, careful of setting them on some of the important papers on his desk. Jinx took a look inside the open paint buckets, her prosthetic finger poking the congealed top of the green paint. He had been gone for a long time, so long that there was a nearly full dry layer on the top. They would have to dig out the dry and congealed bits to actually use the paint for whatever Jinx had in mind.

“Paint?” He asks, “In your hair?”

“Welllllll,” She drawls, “When you say it like that it doesn’t sound too good, but, yeah, but I also wanted to use it for something else.”

“I’ve got hair dye around here. If you want that.”

“Later,” She says, “Let me just do this first.”

Jinx uses her fingers to dig out the congealed paint, opening up the layers to give them paint that’s actually usable. She slaps the congealed bits in a way that looks haphazardly, but is actually quite coordinated, considering she doesn’t splatter any of the paint on the junk he’s got lying all around.

Her empty grin becomes mischievous, and she looks him long in the eyes as she swipes her fingers through the paint, tinting her pale skin a light green and she swipes them across his upper bicep. Two parallel lines, running bright across his dark skin. Then, she swipes her fingers across her own unmarred skin, using the paint still lingering on her fingers to draw the same exact pattern in the same exact spot on herself.

She whistles, raising a brow, “Lookin’ good, boy savior.”

Ekko huffs out a laugh, and for the first time the nickname doesn’t sound so painful coming out of her mouth, “You look good too. But, uh, maybe we could change? I don’t, um, want to stain these clothes any more.”

He’s got dust and blood on him, and he needs to get it off. Jinx’s outfit is certainly… nice, but he can’t and doesn’t want to look at her in the outfit she kept dying in.

Jinx mulls over the idea, paint dribbling down her arm. It plinks onto the wooden flooring. His own paint does the same, leaving behind cold dripping streaks. “Fine, got anything good around here?”

“Hopefully things are up to your taste.” Ekko turns around to dig through his clothing stash he stores in a laundry hamper that’s pretty banged up. They’re both around the same height, Jinx a little smaller and much skinnier, thanks to the muscle Ekko’s put on through the years, but his stuff should fit her fine. Jinx digs through the drawers of his work bench, and then looks around his room, and then finally stops to hover over his shoulder, peering over his body to see what kind of goods he has lying around. He finds a few mostly clean pieces for himself, they just smell a bit dusty and old since they’ve been lying around for so long with no one to wear them, to use them. He stands to his full height, and lets Jinx take her turn rummaging around to find something suitable.

She stands and turns towards him when she’s done, raising her brow. “I’ve got to get changed.”

“Okay,” Ekko says as he turns around, the paint on his arm dry but surprisingly not uncomfortable. He strips off his old shirt, and replaces it with the new. “Promise I won’t sneak a peek,” Ekko says, untying his shoes so he can change his pants.

Jinx stays silent, and to his word, Ekko doesn’t turn around, even if he wants to pry words from her mouth. They’ve dressed in the same room before, but that was when they were kids, when the differences between them weren’t so big, so daunting, so beautiful and terrifying. He’s dressed in front of girls before, it was a privilege to have your own private room in the undercity, but this was different. This was her. Powder. Jinx.

“I can’t promise the same thing,” She says after a long silence, and Ekko can’t help the way his face heats.

He huffs out a laugh, “Yeah, whatever.”

They fix themselves up in silence, and Ekko waits quietly as he waits for Jinx’s signal to turn around since he’s done getting ready first.

“I’m ready, buttercup,” She whistles, and Ekko turns. She’s wrapping a last layer of bandages around her chest, they’re loose enough not to bruise, and they look weirdly good on her. She has an older pair of his pants that are just a size too small for himself, and they fit her like a glove. She looks good. Real good, in his clothes. “What? I still gotta accessorize.”

“Nothing, uh, you just look… good.”

Jinx’s pale face heats, but she tilts her head in a way that makes her band cover her face, like she’s trying to hide the fact that she’s blushing. That, in a way, is much too vulnerable. They aren’t there yet. They are barely on the same side right now, they are not friends, much less anything more.

Ekko just grabs a few more paint cans, all various colors, so they can continue to paint on their human canvases. On themselves. On each other. He brings them to the center of his room where there’s more room to paint, and Jinx brings the other two cans from the workbench along with a mostly clean paint brush that she found… somewhere.

Jinx dips the paint brush into the pink paint bucket after digging around in the bucket to reveal the wet paint, and then motions with her index finger for him to come closer. He obliges, crawling closer, and with the pink paint, she draws a big X on the front of his shirt. The paint drips a little, making it perfectly imperfect, and he gently takes the brush out of her hands, and draws the same X across the bandages on her chest.

Matching.

He lets the brush hover over where her heart is for a moment, before putting it down beside them. He’ll deal with the dried paint later. If there even is a later. (There will be. He’s determined to find a tomorrow, and a day after that, and a day after that.)

Finally, Ekko gets his own hands dirty and dips his index finger into a deep blue paint. His hands hover over her body, blue paint dripping, marking her clothes, as he asks for permission for more. Jinx, seemingly surprised at his gentle and cautious actions, nods. Letting him in.

This isn’t what they do. They’re all bloody fists, and gunpowder. Lethal words, and even more lethal weapons. They’re made up of sharp edges, and broken pieces. They don’t do soft and gentle. Whispering words and tender touches.

They’re made to hurt, but seeing that other world made Ekko realize they can be more than that. They can be anything.

Maybe something broken is just something new. Something as equally deserving of love as the thing it used to be.

If Jinx will let him, if the world doesn’t go to shit tomorrow, Ekko and her can build something new together. Maybe they can help each other tape together their broken pieces and create a new puzzle. Maybe, maybe. (Maybe there can be a myriad of first times.)

Ekko draws a blue star on her side. And then a golden crown. Streaks of green. Arrays of pink x’s.

Mine, the drawings all seem to say. Mine, mine, mine.

Not yet, his brain tells him. Not yet, maybe not ever, but this is enough.

Jinx watches him draw, her body relaxed and her eyes hooded. She looks peaceful.

The moment feels like it flows on forever, and after drawing one last thing, a small purple heart near her shoulder which Jinx can’t see unless she looks in a mirror, he deems his job done.

His fingers are stained in a colorful array of paints, half-dry and half-way, gooey all over his hands, and he mindlessly wipes his hands on his pants.

Jinx tsks at his actions, “It’s my turn now.”

She works meticulously, taking ample time to pick out the colors she wanted to use, and finding the perfect spots on his body for her masterpiece. After dipping her fingers into pink paint, she begins to draw pink x’s all over his legs, and Ekko has to suppress the shiver he feels once she touches him.

She purses her lips as she works, her brow furrowing in concentration, but the delicate space they’ve fostered seems to break when she asks, “Why are you even doing this? Don’t you hate me?”

Ekko’s mouth works before his mind, “I’ve never hated you.”

Even he doesn’t know if this is a lie, or the truth. He hated Silco, fucking hated that Jinx worked for him, that she was involved in the production of shimmer. He hated that she had killed his friends, and he hated that she had left him all behind too. He hated and he hated and he fucking hated, but she was a broken imperfect person. Just like he was.

And Ekko had realized that there were things to love about her too. Things to love about Jinx, about the girl in front of him, not the girl from his past or the girl from another world. Her wittiness, her intelligent mind. Her resilience, her heart. Her laugh and her voice, and the way she looked at him.

Her broken bits, and the pieces that were sewn together.

“You should,” She says, voice breaking. “You really should.”

He can’t though. Not now, not anymore. Not after everything he’s seen, after everything he’s realized.

“I don’t,” He reaffirms, and this time, it is the truth. He doesn’t hate the person in front of him.

She rolls her watery eyes, sniffling, and keeps painting. She marks him less than he had marked her, but he’s marked all the same. Hers, hers, hers.

“There you go,” She says, suddenly cheerful, “Perfect. Lookin’ like a real piece of art.” She stands up, wiping her wet hands on his bed sheets. He can’t even make himself complain about it. “Where’s that hair dye then?”

Ekko gets up too, thinking it over, because he can’t quite remember where he put it, “Uh.” He takes an embarrassingly long time looking for the small tin, Jinx following him behind, and counting the seconds, fake-mockingly. He shouts ‘a-ha!’ when he finds the tin under his bed, and he opens the lid to reveal a magenta color. More purple than pink.

He raises a brow as he shows her the color, and she hums in approval.

“Want me to do it for you?” He asks even if both of their hands are already stained. It doesn’t matter who does it since they’re both stained, but he wants to do it for her. He sits on the edge of his bed, and then motions for her to do the same. She sits so close, the closest they’ve been all day, that their knees touch.

“Yeah, but just a little streak.” She brings her index finger and thumb together, making a small pocket of space. She then squishes them together over and over, peering through the space, like she’s squishing his head in her view. “Just an itty bitty piece.”

“I get it, I get it.” Ekko uses his clean-ish fingers to scoop up a good amount of the dye, and uses his other hand, which is shockingly clean, to section out a piece of her hair. He begins working the dye through her hair, from root to ends. It only takes a couple of passes since they aren’t dyeing that much hair.

“Do I need to wash it out later?”

“Yeah, you’ll have to. There’s a sink downstairs you can use when you’re ready.”

“Okay… Thanks,” She murmurs, looking at him. The dye brings out the pink glow of her eyes. She averts them, and jumps out of her seat. “Now,” She walks over, slapping her mini-gun lovingly, “I gotta upgrade this bad boy.” She waggles her eyebrows, the moment over, and Ekko just laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

It's like he's seeing her for the first time all over again. Her hair cut close to her head, her bang highlighted with drying magenta dye, covered in marks that are undoubtedly his.

She's beautiful. Always has been.

Ekko feels like if he reaches out into the air, he could grab the feelings bursting forth from his chest. He wonders if she can feel them too. He wonders if when she tries to grab a screwdriver, she’ll grab his heart right from his chest instead.

all the hues of you - adoringsteve (2025)

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