She waits.

And Hammer Man returns with a couch on each shoulder. She can just make out a faint mechanical whirr as he sets them down. 

"Take whichever you prefer." 

She perches on a couch.

"You - do heroing - often?"

"Of course. I'm the Defender of Tomorrow, after all. Though I guess you're not from around here, so you wouldn't know. Name's Jayce." He offers a hand to shake.

She hesitates, then leans forward and shakes his hand.

"Idain," she says - the first thing she could think of. It's a common southern Satni name meaning 'water'. A little too on the nose, maybe, but if she takes five minutes to think of a name she will have a different problem.

Jayce settles into the opposite couch.

"Nice to meet you, Idain. I hope Piltover'd been treating you well up until the explosion, but I kinda suspect that wasn't the case. Care to fill me in on your side of the story?"

"Piltover is okay. I was - somewhere else, before. It wasn't nice there and I don't want to talk about it. But I was thinking of home when the explosion happened and that's why I look so," she gestures at her red-eyed tear-streaked face.

Jayce nods. "... Zaun?" 

She shakes her head.

"... Alright, I won't ask. But if you ever want to talk about it, I'm here."

"Thank you," she says softly.

"... So, what now? Your face is going to be all over the news, everyone's going to want the name of the water magic heroine. Should I stonewall them? Find you somewhere quiet to stay until you're ready to talk to them?"

"I - don't want to be news. I just wanted - to help."

"... Happened to me too, kid. Fighting it didn't help."

"What was it like for you?"

"Found a really, really magic crystal. Tried to figure out a good application for it. Decided it was a decent idea to let some other scientists collaborate. One of 'em was a Zaunite machine zealot in disguise. He stole it, used it to build war machines. Should've seen through the disguise, but the potential..." 

He shrugs.

"So I spent a week straight in my lab and came out with my Mercury Hammer. Smashed my way through his machines, shattered the crystal. When I came back everybody was calling me a hero. All I wanted to do was fix a mistake I'd made." 

She nods thoughtfully.

"And you couldn't hide?"

"And leave my home? My lab? My work? I was stuck, well and truly stuck. Either be a hero and get to work more on the breakthroughs I'd made when I built the hammer, or run for it and never be a proper scientist again."

He shrugs. "You get used to it. And it's not as if I hate helping the people of my city, it's just... I guess I wish I had the option not to, you know?"

"I can hide," she says. "I'm good at hiding."

He smiles slightly. "... Good luck. I never saw you."

She smiles. This time she succeeds at it.

"It was nice to meet you," she says, and she jumps up off the couch and darts away. She's very small and quick; it's hard to keep sight of her.

Jayce isn't looking: he's going back into his lab to delete the security tapes.

So she goes home, taking care that no one sees her on the way or catches her flying back in the window.

Jinx is flopped on the couch, face-down.

She pauses for a moment, perched in the window—