The Sixth | Ekko

Chapter Forty-Two

Ekko was silent for a moment as he stared at Momo, her words a recurrent in his mind as he took his time assaying the depth and meaning of them. Like a chisel to stone, he began chipping away the layers.

One word stood more prominent than the others. Italicized.

Again.

She was afraid to fall for him again.

His mind continued to wander, the chisel working diligently to unveil the intricate cast underneath. When would she have...?

"I thought you were asking me to go with you..."

"I misread every interaction we had in that place."

Oh.

He heard his teeth grind together in his skull as he tore his gaze from her, his mind racing to find something to say to her.

But nothing came.

"I always thought you were some brilliant thing," she said in the midst of their extended silence, pulling his attention back to her. She turned so that she was sitting forward instead of towards him. "Even as kids, I got to watch you take stuff apart and put them back together again in a way that made them work even better than before. I followed you around like you were a God, accepted all the mean things you said about me as facts, because how could someone so smart be wrong about something? But after the incident with the tip, I realized you could be just as wrong as anyone else. Could fuck up just as well as I could. No one is a saint, especially down here."

"Then in the other reality, out of all the people I could've latched onto, it was you. Calling me amazing instead of annoying, hugging me instead of shoving past me, sitting with me for hours as both of us tried to build something together. It made me think I was wrong about you all over again. Maybe you weren't a saint, but that didn't mean you couldn't be a saviour. My saviour."

Ekko drew a sharp breath as she paused to take a quivering breath.

"I thought I loved you... and... maybe I did... or at least felt something close to that. But it didn't matter. It never will. Because if... if she was still here... you would choose her every time... and yet... I let you kiss me even though I knew that. Kissed you back... even though I'm your second choice no matter how much you deny it. The other reality is proof of that."

"Fuck the other reality," he said sharply as soon as she finished speaking. "They might have the same faces as us, but they haven't lived the same lives. I can't speak for that version of myself, but I'm glad I got to learn the truth about you. You aren't annoying, and you are amazing. And you've proven that even more since then."

He scooted away from the armrest so that he could be closer to her, turning so that his feet were on the ground. He placed a hand on her thigh near her knee, his fingers resting on the sides of her leg.

Six's eyes widened as she peered down at his hand without lowering her head, his touch sending signals up her leg and spine that tickled her brain and fluttered her heart.

"I spent a long time in denial when it came to Jinx. Some of my friends got killed by her because of it... and a few times she almost got me too. But you... you healed me... saved my life even though I hurt you. You kept going... kept proving me wrong."

His fingers curled, the tips of them lightly pressing into her leg.

Six slowly turned her head, their eyes locking for a fleeting moment, trading wordless secrets before Ekko shyly looked away, as if holding eye contact would scare away his ability to say what he wanted to next.

"The more I think about it, the more I believe that... we must be tied together by some invisible string or something." His cheeks flared with nervous heat. "We—we share the same guilt... lost the same people... have the same enemies... ended up in the same alternate reality..."