EVEN WITHOUT NAMING YOU

CHAPTER 1

"It's for her, isn't it?" Ekko whispered, his voice strangely calm.

Vi remained silent for a moment, her gaze fixed on the tattoo as though trying to engrave it in her mind one last time before answering.

"Yeah... It's for Jinx," she said, her voice a bit rougher. "She's still here, somewhere." Her eyes shone with an unspoken sadness. "I wanted to tell her I'll never forget her."

Ekko felt a weight settle on his shoulders. He knew that pain. He understood what it meant. But he also knew, for a long time, that he could never truly understand what it felt like to lose his sister. Nor what it meant to continue living with a ghost.

And then, suddenly, the image of Vi with that tattoo faded from his mind, replaced by another memory, one much older, the one he could never erase. He closed his eyes for a moment, and everything froze. The flashback flooded him as he relived the scene from the past, in the turbine, just before the war began.

He saw her again, standing on the edge, ready to erase everything. Jinx, Powder before her transformation. She was there, at the moment he had rewound time, where each second seemed like it could save them. He had approached her without hesitation, without thinking. He had taken her in his arms from behind, firmly, in a protective gesture, to hold her back, to stop her from falling into the void.

He relived every detail. The way his fingers had closed around her, almost instinctively, trying to save her. The softness of her skin under his hands. And in that embrace, he had felt something he had never perceived before: a bond, a desperate love, but also a deep sadness. It had been so long since he had felt her touch in that way. It was different now. They weren't the same anymore. But that contact, that simple gesture to unite them again in their shared pain, had warmed his heart in an unexpected way. Jinx's skin, warm under his fingers, the fragility of her life between his arms, all of it moved him more than he could have imagined.

"I won't let you go," he had whispered, but deep down, he knew he couldn't promise that. He had rewound time, four seconds at a time, hoping it would be enough to save her. But it was more than magic. It was the will to not lose her, a desperate struggle.

The seconds stretched in his mind, each small stretch of time like an eternity. And when, at last, Powder stopped fighting her own pain and accepted his help, he felt an enormous weight lift from his shoulders. But it wasn't over. She had pulled away from him, broken but safe. The only sound that echoed in the air was Powder's ragged breathing and the heavy silence between them.

"I'm holding you, Powder," he had wanted to say. But he didn't have the words. He had let his heart carry what he felt. She wasn't just a lost sister. She was also his friend, his true love, his alter ego, his opposite, his madness. It was Powder, the little girl he had known, the one he had always wanted to protect. Sadly, without success...

"I know, Vi. I know you'll never forget her. But she'll always be with us, in what we do."

Ekko's gaze slowly drifted to the hair elastic hanging from her fingers. He touched his hair, exactly where Powder had once put the elastic for him, before everything fell apart. It was a small gesture, an intimate memory he kept for himself. If he didn't have a tattoo, if Vi had chosen this symbol, at least he had that: the elastic, a thin thread connecting his past to his present. It was his way of keeping the memory alive, even if it wasn't as obvious as the blue cloud etched into Vi's skin. He looked at Vi, trying to support her, but also to understand what she felt. Losing Jinx had been devastating for her. Ekko knew that this war, and the scars left by Powder and Jinx's separation, would leave indelible marks. Perhaps more than for him. He had been lucky enough to escape such a tragic end, but the loss of his sister and the absence of Jinx... it was a pain he could never erase.