Chapter 2 - The Green Glow of the Bunker
Ekko hadn’t bothered to go back to sleep, instead he quietly slipped a bare-boned breakfast, consisting of toast crudely slathered with chunky peanut butter, crust uncut, and slipped out the door.
Perhaps he should join clubs again, get involved in school, and make a few friends with those obscenely stuck-up pilties. Smile more.
He scowled, he hated when people told him to smile more. It was such a common disbelief that pushing his cold scowl upward, baring teeth like a rabid animal, would make him feel shiny and sparkly inside. Bullshit.
Ekko followed a familiar opening between two meek trees, in the ravine that curled around his home. There was no path, a measure of security of course, but it did make navigating the forest much more troublesome. His eyes searched the mossy dark floor for telltale signs of clues he’d placed there months before: a discrete beaten can of soda and he would take ten paces right, an abandoned wind up toy -head missing- would direct him a few meters to the left.
It was only when the faint glow of a green electric lantern, buzzing slightly, drew him in. It was perched underneath the odd concrete structure he’d discovered the weeknd he’d moved up to Piltover. He was running of course, as always it seemed nowadays, and had met fate with a blithering SMACK as he had run face first into it. When the circling stars, the daze of confusion, finally lifted, he found himself at a rusted door, hooded by a concrete awning.
Ekko reached for the doorknob he'd spent weeks trying to pick through. Every key he’d searched the forest floor for didn’t fit. Every odd question he’d ask Benzo, was answered with a solution that didn’t succeed. The hinges were cleaned by yours truly, the edges sanded to coax the door into opening. Nothing worked.
It took one evening to open, he’d been frustrated out of his mind, melted it down with a torch, jammed a crowbar into the knob’s neck, and replaced it after it feel with a dull thud. If Benzo was there to witness this discovery, he’d have chastised Ekko with a raised brow, applauding him for his effective solution, complaining at the doorknob on the garage door that had gone missing.
It was a Solution though, and like all solutions, the mysterious door opened into a dusty stairwell, leading right down into a musty hell.
Ekko, overactive imagination as per usual, had half expected that the ceiling would cave in, or that he would find a collection of dead bodies in this mysterious cellar in the woods. But… there was nothing, aside from a few chairs, and a dim light bulb that refused to turn on.
It was the summer before his sophomore year, and calling in his buddies with an exuberant energy, they’d all manage to whip the cellar into shape. A ‘man-cave’, Benzo would call it, if he knew of its existence, but Ekko was sure to drench the place in febreeze before he fixed the ventilation.
Tonight, or rather, Ekko peeking at his watch as the sun began to replace the eerie glow of the moon, this morning, Ekko took down the lamp from where it sat on the awning and shuffled down the stairs.
He wasn’t surprised to find Scar sitting on the thrifted couch, distantly watching an old tv, fuzzy with static. “What’s up Boss?” he asked casually, the beer in his hand nearly empty as he swirled about the last few drops of it. Him and his goddamn elephant ears could always pick up on the slightest noise, a drippy tap, the rustle of leaves in the distant woods, though usually, it was the most scalding cups of tea, laced with gossip.
“I told you, don’t call me that dude, It’s Ekko.” He plopped down beside him, biting into his dry slab of breakfast, “I don’t need to spell it out for you, do I? Or do you need to repeat kindergarten again?”
Scar gave him a sharp annoyed glance, “When will you drop that? That was told in complete trust. Eye for an eye Ekko, I’ll get you back one day.”
“Getting a break from fatherhood?” Ekko asked, squinting at the beer in his hand.
“Something like that.” He mumbled, “It’s just… overwhelming sometimes.”
“I would say something relatable, but I have yet to experience that.” Ekko shrugged, “Though, if you ever need a babysitter for dirt cheap, I’m your man.”
Scar, was a senior at a Piltover Academy, some sports scholarship, when Ekko had first arrived. It seemed unlikely, an oddly young sophomore who spent nights fiddling away in the robotics lab, and an oddly old senior who spent nights training on the long-emptied football field, becoming friends. Scar had offered Ekko a ride home one evening, and despite his caution against strangers, Ekko’s exhaustion had made him gullible. He got home within the half hour, where the bus would’ve dragged on for hours. Scar, despite insisting he was in a rush to get to a night-shift job to support his to-be family, always waited to make sure Ekko was through his front door before he sped off at illegal speeds.
It wasn’t until Benzo had questioned him, that he began taking the bus again.
“Ekko! Catching rides with a stranger-” Benzo was passionately venting his frustration into a client’s engine with a wrench as he screwed something shut, “-Absolutely unbelieveable! I raised you better son, what if you got kidnapped?”
“I don’t want to shit on my self-confidence, but I doubt anyone would want me.” Ekko snorted, “No money, No fame, No… reason to want me, I doubt I’d make a good bargin.”
“That’s not the point boy, and besides that kid is years older than you, couldn’t you make friends with people your age?”
“I do, the Firelights.”
“That’s a goddamn gang is what it is…” Benzo sighed, shaking his head vigirously, “Firebugs.”
“Firelights.” Ekko interjected, “-And, besides, did you know he’s from the Undercity? Just like us!”
“Being from the undercity, uppercity, midcity, goddamn-whatever-city doesn’t matter! That just makes him prone to being more dangerous, Ekko.”
“It really be your own people.” Ekko muttered as he rolled his eyes, “C’mon Benzo lighten up, at least I’m making friends. That’s what you said, your only wish is that I make friends, and so I did.”
“Yes Ekko, but not with these hooligans, make some friends at your school.”
“And what’s wrong with ‘thesse hooligans’? What makes them soo different from the ‘ hooligans ’ I hung out with before?” Ekko had only meant to raise his voice slightly, but was shocked to find that he had blown up in Benzo’s face. Benzo put the wrench down gently, plinking slightly as it met the cold metal table.
“That’s quite enough Ekko.” Benzo curtly muttered. “Go to your room… we’re not discussing… that today.”
By this point, it had only been a little over a year before the incident had happened. Ekko couldn’t squeeze out an apology, he’d just stumbled a turn on his heel and locked his bedroom door.
Ekko jumped off his train of memories before it brought him too close to that forbidden era of his life. “I’ve been getting nightmares.” He admitted to Scar. The buzz of the TV was comforting, grounding.
“Seen a doctor?” Scar asked, downing the rest of his morning beer.
“Don’t want to worry Benzo, and besides, I’m not permitted free piltie healthcare until I graduate. Some idiotic logic with ‘permanent residence’ or something.”
“That doesn’t sound right”
“I’m too tired to look into it.”
“Do you want to talk about it? The nightmares?”
Ekko paused, “...Not really.”
“Damn bro, then why bother bringing that up?” Scar teased, throwing a pillow at Ekko’s face, hitting his cheek right under his darkening eyebags, “I’m kidding, whenever you’re ready, yeah?”
Ekko nodded, the taste of breakfast growing stale on his tongue, “I better get going, gotta get ready for school before Benzo finds out I snuck out. Can’t wait to slave away in the classroom before I rush my ass home to help the shop.”
“Really, you aren’t gonna join robotics this year? No… outside school life at all?” Scar sat up straighter, looking Ekko down with concern.
“Don’t give me that face, I don’t… have time. I have the Firelights, School, Benzo, and we all have bills. That keeps me busy enough.” Ekko’s eyes darted down.
“Don’t bullshit, the time you spend with this little gang of ours is barely productive, we aren’t even a gang. We sit down here and chatter, play video games, and hold hands and sing kumbaya more often than not.” Scar laughed, low and rusty. It was familiar, a guilty comfort of sorts, to fill the room with laughter. Ekko saw a flash of a blue braid in the corner of his eye, it was always Zaunite laughter that brightened his mood the best.
“If you’re looking for something to do, because despite how much you enjoy hanging out with the rest of the Zaunite outcasts down here, this shouldn’t be the rest of your life, there’s this little volunteer center my girl found when she was looking for daycare for our kid.” A fondness lit in Scar’s eyes, “They take care of kids who can’t afford those hefty childcare prices. Weekends are open for highschool students, and trust me when I say, they’ll take anyone. You should give it a try mate. I’ll be sure to drop my little boy off if you’re there, you’re the only one who can handle his tantrums.”
In actual fact, no one could handle mini Scar’s temper tantrums, but Ekko smiled slightly, “I’ll give it a try.”
“And-” Scar sighed, standing up and cracking his neck, “While you’re at it giving your half-hearted ‘I’ll try’... give robotics a chance again. Y’know, I heard they got second place last year, probably because they were missing a certain esteemed creative, innovative, fatass brain” Scar flicked a finger on Ekko’s head, causing him to reach up to return the gesture. Scar pushed him back on the couch with a casual hand.
“I don’t know what caused you to quit so abruptly last year, but I've never seen you more miserable than when you aren’t fidgeting with cogs and whatnot mate.” Scar was climbing the stairs, face shadowed as Ekko watched him from the couch, “Don’t give up on your dreams. Don’t be like… me. Your scholarship is just the beginning, you’re gonna do great things Ekko, you hear me?”
Goddamnit, Ekko hated to admit it, but Scar always had a way of convincing, or having him second guessing his assured choices. He might as well be the leader of the Firelights the way he carried himself. There was some truth in Scar’s words though, that Ekko could be wasting his youthful years staring at the ceiling in his free time, waiting for something to change. Praying that something would happen and somehow flip his life over, and fade the greyness of it all. Some mornings, gravity felt heavier than usual, pinning him to his mattress, while his thoughts buzzed like trapped wasps, never still enough for sleep.. But this state of docileness had worn Ekko down, it was only a matter of time before he couldn’t take his passive existence in this world, and do something drastic to change it.
“I can always drop out later,” Ekko muttered, sinking into the couch. The thought offered a bitter comfort—a last-ditch escape, a choice he could cling to when everything else felt like quicksand. He let out a short, dry laugh. “Great. Now I sound like a broke motivational speaker.”
The Robotics club was conveniently at the end of the week. Perfect, now Ekko could worry for a whole few days before he hem and haw between flaking and showing up!
He turned his head over, eyes passing over the familiar images, and painted images of friends moved away, interpretively etched in their sprayed calloused designs. So young, all of them, Undercity rats who’d climbed their way out to the grey area between Piltover and Zaun, looking for glory and change. Ekko wouldn’t even call this bunker, or whatever the Firelights seemed to represent now, a grey area between the two. It was something new, something of itself, and granted its members consisted of just Zaunites, but it felt thrilling and refreshing.
Scar was right, horribly and utterly, correct. He was wasting time, while he had the energy, he just needed to twist himself inside out in search of motivation.
The light that poured from the cellar door, left open, cast a hazy glow on the room, filling the room with the smell of fresh moss, and distantly, some fanatic neighbour who was cutting their grass this early in the morning. Perhaps, he would rest his eyes for just a moment, just to bake in the beauty of inaction, of passiveness.
A flash of blue crossed his eyes again when he blinked them shut. His hand gripped the edge of the couch as he abruptly sat up. God, that girl couldn’t even let him sleep, couldn’t let him be late to his first day of school.
It nagged him, the question that trailed off after every thought of her , Jinx.
“Would you ever forgive me Ekko?” He tried to remember her voice, age it up, but it stagnantly remained childish, begging. One could almost feel pity for it.
As he climbed the stairs, his hand firmly shut the door, a cloud of dust and smoke hissing from the force as he did.
“How could I Pow- Jinx?” He thought bitterly,
“You didn’t apologize. Not once. Not then. Not ever.”