Ahri held Jinx until the shaking stopped.
For a while, Jinx did not move. She kept her face against Ahri's chest, fingers twisted in the fabric at her back. Ahri kept one arm around Jinx and one hand on the back of her head, calm and warm.
Ahri's hand tightened once, then loosened. "He's coming."
Jinx pulled back fast and wiped her nose with her sleeve. "I wasn't crying."
Ahri smiled faintly and brushed the dampness from Jinx's cheek with her thumb.
Jinx looked away, cheeks burning.
"Now we spy on Logan's memories," Ahri said.
That made Jinx blink.
Ahead, Logan walked through the haze. Just Logan, younger and tired, carrying a small paper bag in one hand.
Jinx's throat tightened.
She knew this street.
"Oh," she said quietly.
Logan reached the door and pushed it open.
The second he stepped inside, another Jinx sprang up from a chair like a trap had gone off.
"You're late! You said you'd be back soon, and that was not soon. That was almost dying of boredom. I counted ceiling stains. I named three of them. One's Morris. He's ugly."
The old Jinx, the memory Jinx, looked thinner than Jinx wanted to remember. Her cheeks were sharper. Dark rings clung under her eyes. Her braids were messier. She moved like too much energy was the only thing keeping her from falling apart.
Jinx folded her arms and stared at herself.
"Wow," she muttered. "I looked awful."
Ahri glanced at her.
"Don't say the sweet thing," Jinx warned.
"I was thinking you look healthier now."
Jinx could not joke it away completely. She remembered this. Not every word, but the feeling. The way she had pushed herself into Logan's house. She had called it visiting. Logan had called it breaking in. Then he had let her stay.
Little by little, that had become normal.
Little by little, she had stopped sleeping with one eye open, curled up, or shivering.
Logan lifted the paper bag. "I brought food."
Memory Jinx leaned forward with a grin too wide for her face. "Please tell me it's something that died dramatically."
"It died in the sump."
"So romantic!"
He opened the bag and pulled out two sump-snapper frogs.
Logan set the frogs on the counter and went to get a knife. Memory Jinx hopped onto the table, swinging her legs.
"You don't have to split them if there are two," she said. "I can be polite. I can eat both and let you smell the bones."
Logan came back with the knife. "I'm only eating half of one. You can have one and a half."
Memory Jinx froze, then squinted at him. "That's suspiciously nice."
"You eat more than I do."
"I do not."
"You ate half my breakfast yesterday."
"That was tax."
"Tax?"
"Houseguest tax."
"You forced me to let you stay here."
"Exactly. That's expensive."
Logan shook his head, but he was smiling. He pressed one frog down and began to cut.
Then the knife stopped.
The change was small at first. Logan's shoulders tightened. His fingers curled around the handle until the knuckles paled. The warmth left his face as if someone had opened a drain inside him.
Jinx looked at Ahri.
Ahri's expression had gone flat and serious. She raised one hand.
Memory Jinx kept talking, but her voice changed.
It grew heavier. Louder. Not in volume, but in weight. Each word scraped across the room.
"Come on, Logie, don't tell me you're scared of a frog."
The knife trembled.
Jinx's stomach turned cold.
"No," she whispered.
The room blurred.
Ahri stepped forward and drew in a breath. Purple light gathered around her fingers, threads pulling out of the walls, out of Logan's shadow, out of the warped sound of Memory Jinx's voice. The dream peeled away like smoke. It twisted into a dark violet sphere in Ahri's palm.
Then Ahri ate it.
Her body jerked. She bent slightly, one hand pressing to her temple. Pain flashed over her face. She let out a small sound before she could stop it, sharp and muffled behind clenched teeth.
Jinx reached for her. "Ahri?"
Ahri held up a hand.
The purple glow pulsed under her skin, then faded. Her breathing evened out. Slowly, her shoulders relaxed.
"I'm fine," she said.
The street returned around them.
Logan was walking home again with the paper bag.
Jinx stared. "We're doing it again?"
"The way it happened," Ahri said.
This time, Logan opened the door, and Memory Jinx launched into the same complaints, but her voice was hers. Annoying, fast, bright, bruised around the edges.
The frogs came out. The jokes came with them. Logan cut one in half and pushed the bigger portion toward her.
"You're giving me extra because you like me," Memory Jinx said.
"I'm giving you extra because you'll steal it anyway."
"Lies. Slander. True, but rude."
They ate the disgusting frogs with their fingers, grimacing and laughing. Memory Jinx talked with her mouth full until Logan threatened to throw her outside. She told him he wouldn't, because then he'd miss her. He said the quiet might be nice. She kicked his chair. He kicked hers back.
It was nothing.
A dirty room. Bad food. Two idiots laughing over frogs that smelled like a crime scene.
And it had made Logan happy.
The thought hit Jinx harder than she expected.
So much of her life with him had been this.
Then the Void had twisted one tiny piece and almost turned it into murder.
Jinx hugged herself. "So it just… grabs the good stuff and breaks it?"
"It looks for what matters," Ahri said. "Then it poisons the shape of it. Love becomes fear. Comfort becomes threat. A voice becomes a weapon."
Jinx watched Logan laugh at something Memory Jinx said. "There could've been a version where he did it."
"No." Ahri's answer came fast.
Jinx looked at her.
Ahri softened her voice. "There is no use grieving a worse world the Void invented to hurt him. That wasn't truth."
They moved on.
Memories rose and fell around them, some clear, some cracked at the edges. Jinx saw herself dragging Isha into Logan's home for the first time, talking too loud because she was nervous and pretending not to be. Isha hid half behind Jinx, watching Logan with those wide eyes, while Logan crouched and spoke to her like she was not a problem to solve.
Another memory showed the first kiss. Jinx almost shouted at her past self for looking so smug afterward. Ahri said nothing, but Jinx caught the corner of her mouth twitching.
Then came the day Logan died.
Jinx went very still.
She saw the goodbye again. The way he looked at her as if he was trying to memorize her, smiling and apologize at the same time. She felt the old wound open, but before the dream could darken, Ahri moved. Purple gathered. Ahri swallowed the corruption and swayed afterward, face pale, jaw tight.
More followed. Their reunion. Longa holding her. Isha laughing between them. Vander's heavy hand on Logan's shoulder. Vi trying not to cry.
Not all of the memories had Jinx in them. Some belonged to Logan and Isha. Logan listening while Isha explained something tiny and important with both hands. Logan carrying her after she fell asleep against his side.
But most of the memories were Jinx.
Not all important. Logan watching her paint a wall and pretending the blue handprint on his shirt was not there. Jinx falling asleep at his table. Jinx stealing the last bite of his food. Jinx laughing so hard she almost fell out a window. Logan catching her by the back of her belt and calling her insane.
Each time the dream soured, Ahri took it into herself.
Each time, it hurt.
By the tenth time, Jinx stopped pretending not to notice.
"You've been doing this the whole time," she said.
Ahri wiped a thin line of sweat from her brow. "Don't worry about it."
Jinx wanted to snap at her, but the words jammed up. She looked around the next memory instead and realized something that had been sitting in front of her for a while.
Ahri was not in any of them.
Not once.
After what felt like hours, Ahri stopped beside a bed. She looked tired now, truly tired.
"This is probably the last one," Ahri said.
Jinx saw herself and Logan on the bed and immediately understood.
"Oh."
Her face went hot. "Do we have to watch this part?"
The memory bent.
Logan's hand moved toward Jinx's throat.
Ahri took the corruption before it could finish forming. The purple sphere came out darker this time. When she swallowed it, she staggered.
Jinx caught her arm.
Ahri's fingers dug into Jinx's wrist. Her eyes shut, and pain rolled through her face in waves. Then, slowly, she forced it down. The room reset.
This time, the memory played as it had been.
Logan and Memory Jinx slept tangled together, breathing softly in the dim room. The sheets were a mess. Jinx's hair spilled everywhere. Logan's arm was around her.
Real Jinx glanced at Ahri.
Ahri's face had changed over the journey. At first Jinx had thought it was exhaustion. Now she was not sure. There was something raw under it. Something that had been rubbed open by every happy little scene.
Ahri watched Logan and Jinx sleep.
"Have you realized it?" Ahri asked.
Jinx swallowed. "Realized what?"
"You're everything to him."
The room stayed quiet.
Jinx shifted her weight. "That's not…"
"It is." Ahri did not look at her. "Not the only thing he loves. But the center. The home he returns to, even inside his own mind."
Jinx did not know what to do with that. Usually she could make a joke and run through it. There was nowhere to run here.
Ahri's voice lowered. "I'm sorry."
Jinx frowned. "For what?"
Ahri breathed in, then let it out slowly. "Maybe that Watcher was right."
Jinx's eyes narrowed. "What Watcher?"
Ahri shook her head. "Maybe the corruption had already reached me. That envy was eating its way in." A bitter smile touched her lips and vanished. "No. That would be an excuse."
She fell silent for a long moment.
Then she said, very quietly, "I'm jealous. I'm very, very, very jealous."
Jinx stared at her.
For a second, the words did not fit.
Ahri was jealous?
That was supposed to be Jinx's job.
Ahri was ridiculously beautiful, could speak softly and make pain sound less sharp. She could stand beside Logan with that calm, sad look, and Jinx would feel something ugly clawing at her ribs.
Jealousy...
Jealousy that Ahri understood parts of him Jinx could not reach.
And now Ahri was standing here, saying she was jealous of Jinx.
Jinx looked at the bed, at Logan's arm around the memory of her. At the way his sleeping face had softened.
Something in her chest twisted.
The old Jinx in her wanted to laugh because it was stupid. The scared one wanted to snap that Ahri had no right to be jealous, not when she was Ahri. But another part could only stand there and feel the shape of her own insecurity staring back at her.
Ahri must have seen these memories a lot.
She had watched Logan love Jinx in a thousand little ways while tearing knives out of those memories and eating the pain so he would not be lost.
Jinx rubbed at her arm. "You're important to him too."
"I know."
Jinx blinked. That was not the answer she expected.
Ahri finally looked up, not at Jinx, but toward the ceiling. "The memories with me are harder for the Void to reach. The Spirit Realm's purity protects them. Not completely, but enough. That is why you haven't seen them."
"Oh."
Another silence settled between them.
Logan slept peacefully beside Memory Jinx.
Ahri's eyes stayed lifted.
...
"I love him," she said.
...