Kiss!

"Okay, I mean... we could go another round, but let's not just now. I was actually kind of thinking you might wanna have a look at some of my art?"

"Ooh, art!"

"Graffiti art! I mean, you've already been admiring some of my work, the gunsmoke-and-bullets piece -" she gestures to her rather extensive tattoo "- is mine, but of course I've got more to show you. Let me see, where did I shove my artbook..."

"That tattoo is really pretty."

"I think you might be biased 'cause it's attached to a pretty girl, but I'll take what I can get." 

Artbook! Lots of abstract designs with X-shaped motifs in them. Lots of gunsmoke and lightning. And... A landscape of Piltover, done in a sketchy, impressionistic style, from the top of a roof at dawn.

"These are lovely," she says, hugging her. "I'm not nearly that good but now I almost want to try drawing Godscrest."

"If you wanna try, I've got some art supplies... And another sketchbook you might want to see."

She lapses into silence.

"Hmm?"

"... Sorry, didn't want to kill the mood. It's... the Zaun sketchbook." 

"Ah."

Hug.

"I can look at that."

"You really don't have to. It's just. If you want to. And I guess I'm sort of explaining that I'm not expecting all the things you might want to draw to be happy."

More hug.

"Yeah. I'm - I do want to see it, I think."

Jinx hands her a sketchbook. The sketchbook. 

And what is in the sketchbook?

Smoke. Gunsmoke. A lot of gunsmoke. Struck through with crosses. And then faces. People Ruava doesn't know, but that look about Jinx's age. A lot of them look hollow, eaten out from the inside. Some of them have wounds that definitely aren't survivable. Gnarled smoke like grasping hands. Acid-green sludge and blue lightning amid the sky. Weapon schematics. She recognizes Pow-Pow. It wasn't always pink, nor did it always have bunny ears. Here's a portrait of a chestnut-haired girl. Smoke clings to her tattered clothes. She sits in an awkward heap, amid a pile of debris. Blue lightning seethes behind her eyes, reflecting in/from the barrel of the Zapper she holds in one hand. Here's a skyline of a city that's probably Zaun. It doesn't look like the kind of place anyone wants to visit. There isn't a sun.

Yeah. That sure is a place.

It sure is.

Hug.

Hug.

"All the landscapes in Akaiet are pretty," she murmurs. "The nasty stuff happens indoors."

"That's... Part of it, almost. Sometimes I'm not sure how much of it is Zaun being awful and how much is smaller me being a scared little kid with nobody to turn to. I mean, I know for sure that some of these people that I've drawn... With the wounds... are still very much alive, nothing like that happened to them."

More hug.

"...The Emperor's mistress... if she wants somebody alive, they stay that way. She could do things like that to somebody and the next day you wouldn't be able to tell they'd ever been hurt."

"... That's an awfully cheery thought. Especially in a world with healing potions." 

Jinx shudders. She's going to lie her head on Ruava's shoulder and close her eyes and hold her close and just not think about all this for a moment.

Yeah. Good plan.

Hugs.

Hugs hugs hugs. 

... This seems to be helping!