Chapter Text
It changes everything, the moment I see her Light.
I knew.
The moment we locked eyes I knew what she was.
I didn’t have a name for it, a word for it.
Oh, I mean like, I had a whole bunch; shiny, flashlight, sunbeam, firefly, nightlight, rainbubble, glowbug-
-the girl is the light and the light is the girl–
But I didn’t have one word, y’know?
It was there in that first glance. Her eyes are so blue, blue like a clean summer sky, like we never see in Zaun, but even when you climb up high high high all the way Topside, and see that blue, there’s a sun in that sky, and all that blue is just what happens when the light passes through it.
She’s full of every color, actually, all blazing and bright in her, and I think it’s just my imagination – like my scribbles and my scratches and my doodles and my drawings and my monsters until I see her actually let it out, and then I know I was right all along.
I. Knew. It!
It’s not just in her eyes. It’s in her smile, it’s in the way the light clings to her hair. It’s in that clean sunlit scent of hers, her skin and her hair and her everything soaked in radiance that isn’t just coming outta that bright sky she grew up under.
It’s inside her. She’s full of shiny, flashy boom, top to bottom, and she’s holding it in. All her fake smiles, her nice clothes, her perfectly groomed hair, her well-trained poise…it’s all just the pin in a grenade.
And it’s hurting her.
She can’t be real.
She can’t be.
But still…
It’s hurting her.
That’s real. Ask me how I know.
So she’s…real.
And…
Here, she is, and…
I don’t know how we got here.
Her, and me.
Me, Jinx.
Jinx who hurts everyone.
Jinx who can’t be good for anyone.
I close my eyes, and I think of Ekko’s warm, warm smile.
No. I promised him. I promised myself. He met that good version of me. He fell for her. And – if things had been different, if I hadn’t killed his friends, if I hadn’t ended up so emptied-out, if I had it in me to feel back what he – but he understood.
He didn’t say a thing. Just that sad smile. But he understood.
That I had to go.
The flow of time moves on, with or without us.
I promised him. I’m letting the past go. I’m building a new me. I’m leaving that Jinx behind.
Maybe Jinx can stand for whatever you want it to, now.
My eyes open.
And there she is.
I can’t remember the last time I slept wrapped up in someone’s arms. Not since I was little. Vi, Vander, they’d rock me to sleep when I had bad dreams, when I was scared or tired. Silco, too, after a while. He didn’t know what the heck to do with a kid, at first, but I just wouldn’t leave him alone. Clung to him like my lifeline, until I broke through his guard, until he’d sit with me and read me bedtime stories and tuck me in long after I was too old for it, his thin fingers stroking my hair, just to keep the nightmares away…
And now, Lux, and it feels different, and I don’t know how to say how.
She can’t be real.
She hasn’t let me go.
Even asleep, she radiates. We’re so close, I’m breathing that bright sunlit scent, I’m bathing in her warmth, wrapped up in her, cocooned in her arms. There is a window in this little cabin – more of a porthole, really, you can’t open it – and there’s a sliver of light that spills past the little frilly Piltie curtains and brushes Lux’s sleeping face and lights little golden sparks in her hair.
She can’t be real, she’s too perfect, she’s too beautiful, she’s like some celestial being and I’m – I’m me – and –
Lux snorts a little in her sleep and rubs her nose. Her cheek is smooshed into the pillow and there’s a little drool at the corner of her mouth.
…fine. She’s real.
But that doesn’t change that I break everything beautiful.
I won’t….
…Not this time. It can mean what I want it to now…it can…”
I don’t know I’ve started saying it aloud until my eyes open – I’d squeezed them shut – and meet the fluttering of blonde lashes framing blue.
Her eyes are open. She’s looking at me.
She has the cutest sleepy face. It makes her look even younger, even softer, when she’s lost her grip on all that ladylike poise.
I swallow.
I said it aloud.
Lux doesn’t say anything. She gives a small breathy sigh and those soft pink lips become a little cupid’s bow smile.
I wonder if I’ve crossed the line. If she’s regretting it…if I was making a mistake crawling in with her like that…
…if…she’s going to kick me out of her bed….
Warm. Her hand’s on my cheek. Just the points of small slim fingers, at first.
Lux studies my eyes, my face, and for a moment I think she’s going to say something, her lips even part as if she’s thinking about it.
There’s a little fear behind her eyes; but I think it’s the same fear I’m feeling.
That this can’t be real. That something’s going to break the spell.
Instead, her brows furrow and then soften. She lets her fingers slide gently over my cheek, her thumb brushing my blazing cheekbone, her beautiful lashes flutter like butterfly wings.
Her hand slips further and cups my cheek.
She still doesn’t say anything. She just smiles, and I don’t know what my heart is doing, and I’m going to say something stupid or do something stupid and…
And instead, Lux just leans in closer and sinks her head against my shoulder, leaving my chin resting atop her crown of flowing, yellow, fragrant hair.
I’m being hugged by the sun.
I’m limp as a dead fish but frozen up at the same time. My eyes are wide, staring past her at nothing, but my hands, halting and awkward, end up in her hair.
It’s the softest thing I’ve ever touched. It flows over my fingers like liquid gold. I don’t want to get my metal one caught in it. If I snap one hair, I’ll never forgive myself.
I haven’t done anything wrong…
Not to her. Not yet.
But somehow it feels like being forgiven.
I want to cry all over again.
I wonder if I really did make it away from my last Chomper.
What if I didn’t? What if I’m dead?
But I can’t be.
I wouldn’t deserve to go to a place like this.
We lie like that for a long time, breathing each other, saying nothing.
Neither of us dares speak.
It only breaks when the ship lurches beneath us, when the muffled voice of the captain calls distantly and there’s movement on the decks, in the halls.
Her head lifts and looks over her shoulder. Her lips purse and she looks back at me.
Her smile’s bright and a little sad and terribly excited at the same time.
We’re arriving in Demacia.
The shrilling of the gulls, the clanging of bells, creaking of ropes, slop of waves against hulls and shouting of sailors, all of that sounds a little like good ol’ Piltover.
Nothing else is.
It’s the air, first, because of course it is. I told Lux, back on the skyship, how I wanted to ride one – how Powder wanted to ride one, when she was little – but I didn’t tell her how freakin’ terrifying it was to go out over that ocean, to suck in my first gulp of that fresh sea air and…
…and get a lung full of crisp, cold, so sharp it cut all my insides. Clean, even cleaner than Topside, away from all the smells of oil and rust and metal and…
Home.
But the ship with all its metal and its mechanics still had that smell, just hints, it still smelled like Piltover, and Piltover is sure as hell not the Undercity, but it’s not…
…here, either.
We’re lowering into what looks like – well it isn’t even a proper skyport – it’s a port-port, that good ol’ porty smell of fish and water and sailcloth and oils and tar and gull-poop.
They’ve turned what looks like some kind of crumbly old guard tower made of blindingly white stone – blue tile roof – by the look of the rest of the town I’m gonna have to really get used to that aesthetic, oh boy – into an anchor point for the skyship. Just a bunch of scaffolding, sticking out into the void.
But I’m distracted from the view down because Lux bumps my arm as she passes me to the railing, giving a soft, homesick intake of breath, and I look up.
And the world spreads ahead of me.
It’s somehow even more overwhelming than the ocean. Beyond the little jut of land and the clustering roofs of the village is just… green.
There are hills and fields and they’re vividly green, just as bright a green as the brightest Chemtech, only wholesome and natural and stuff, and dotted with bright flecks of what I guess are flowers…
And around the hills are just … walls and walls of big dark trunks and bristly, sleepy looking trees with their big shaggy dark heads all made of green. They’re twisted and old and kinda leathery looking and there’s so…so many of them, stretching away into the horizon, rustling in the breeze and smelling of one of the clean fresh Naturey-type smells I can smell on Lux that I couldn’t identify before…
There’s a lump in my chest. I wish Ekko could see this, and then I don’t, because I want him never to feel like his Tree isn’t special.
It’ll always be special. It’s special because it didn’t grow up where there was a bright sun and fluffy white clouds and clean rain falling and all its friends around it to help it live.
It grew up deep and dark where life shouldn’t be, it clawed its way up out of the muck and said I’m here! Screw you! I wanna live!
Just like us.
And away beyond those trees, the land rises up in the distance into the silhouettes of big spiky ol’ teeth, like Fishbones, or maybe sort of like a sheet that someone rumpled up and left that way, only it’s all spattered with white at the tops until the land and sky kinda blend together and wait is that stuff freakin’ snow?!
I can’t help it. I’m trying to keep my face all cool and cynical but my eyes are widening and I can hear my own breath sucking in and I can feel Lux looking at me with this little sly grin, because she’s gotta freakin’ know, right?
That I’ve just walked into a picture like in those old folktale books Vander used to read us when we were real tiny? I never knew where he got them, but they were some of his most precious possessions…
And now I’m in one, but I can hear it and smell it and taste it and touch it and it’s real…and I’ve got a gold-haired princess from one of those tales giggling and tugging me by the hand as the airship gangplank lowers.
“Come on!” Lux fairly sings, growing brighter by the moment, “Your first steps on Demacian soil. Welcome to your new home!”
She looks at her hand in mine, and stops as she sees my expression.
“W-well, I mean-” Lux’s smile falters only a little, and she looks at her feet, “If you like it.”
I swallow.
…I don’t know if I’ll like Demacia.
But there’s something here I know I do.
“Thank you, stablemaster,” Lux smiles one of her smiles, kindly, sweet and a little bit aloof, the one I’m about to learn is her ‘Lady Crownguard’ smile, “For taking such good care of Starfire for me.”
Coins drop from Lux’s hand into that of the leathery, crinkle-eyed old guy running whatever this weird shed-looking building is. His eyes widen for a second as he sees the coin, and though I’m not familiar with Demacian jink, I take it she’s being very generous.
“Oh-oh no harm at all, Lady Crownguard, o-of course only the finest care for any property of so great a House, and of yourself, my Lady…”
He bows so low I can’t contain a faint burst of nasty cackle.
He jumps and glares sidelong at me, more surprised than anything, but Lux takes it completely in stride, with that winning smile of hers.
And then we’re walking, and I flick the guy fingerguns and a wink, and almost snort laugh again at his absolutely baffled reaction.
I am either going to be miserable here or have the time of my freaking life, I can’t decide.
“You didn’t tell me everyone here was such a stick-in-the-mud, Blondie,” I whisper to Lux’s back as we walk, and she laughs.
“National character, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to teach you one or two things about Demacians,” she gives me that sly look again over her shoulder, “But don’t worry, Terbisia has its share of colorful characters. I’m sure they’ll learn to love you.”
I poke my tongue at her.
“Colorful is my middle name,” I mutter, “Jinx Colorful-Standsfor Jinx, of House Cymbalmonkey, First and Hopefully Last of her Name, Ruler of the Stinkmaws, the Scuttlebutts, Bold Snugger of Blondies-”
Lux stops and hides a snort of that horrible laugh of hers in the neatly-packed travel bag she’s carrying.
I grin and sling my bag a little higher on my shoulder.
It’s a big ol’ long one. I look like I’m carrying a girder in a sack. Lux keeps giving me these rather awed looks at the sight of me managing to hoist the damn thing.
I wink at her and wait for her to catch her breath.
“Speaking of ol’ Terby,” I chew my lower lip, “Now we’re on the ground, how exactly are we getting to your town?”
“I…” Lux smiles back at me, “Will be riding Starfire.”
She lifts her gaze to my baggage.
“I was…intending to either purchase you a steed,” she says, as if that’s something normal people do for random ex-mass-murderers they pick up on an airship ride, “…or…or let you ride with me, but…”
She narrows her eyes and points.
“How much does that weigh?”
“Hmm?”
“Your…I’m presuming that’s your equipment, and not your traveling wardrobe?”
I glance up.
“Oh, this? This is Rhino.”
“Rhino.”
“Mhm. Used to be Fishbones and Pow-Pow. Still kinda is. But Rhino…” I pat the coarse flank of the bag, “Is a new old friend! Got it?”
“Got it,” said Lux, with a wry smile that suggests she doesn’t but she’s letting me have it.
“I considered ‘Bertholt Aurelius Hornby’ but that’s too many syllables.”
“Yes, it is, Jinx.”
“…stop agreeing with me, it’s weirding me out. People don’t agree with me.”
“Oh”, Lux blinks “All right, I’ll stop.”
“You just did it again!” I wail, and she laughs and pokes at my abs, and even the little tickle of her narrow fingertip gives me good shiveries.
“Jinx, I mean to ask, how heavy is that…object?”
I squint at it and shrug it off my shoulder, toss it into her waiting arms, “Pretty heavy I guess-”
She gasps and winces and her knees nearly buckle; I remember, suddenly, that I have Shimmer strength and she doesn’t. She’s actually holding it up pretty well considering she’s apparently a tiny bean compared to the other people around here.
I remember last night; the feeling of her toned arms and tight tummy pressed against me. Just a bit of healthy soft about her, but under it, a healthy strength, too.
“Oof, all right,” Lux pants, pushing Rhino back at me, “Jinx, I’m sorry, we can’t strap that to my horse…we’re going to have to think of another way.”
“I mean, I can just carry it and leg it with ya but – wait hold on backup, your what?”
Lux blinks and smiles winningly at me, “My horse, Starfire.”
She turns and walks away, another young person in slightly clothes popping out of nowhere just to open the doors to the ‘stable’ for her.
I kinda hate how Piltie that is, even if it hits different.
But that’s gone quick, because beyond that door I’m hit with a smell that is animal and outdoors and weird as heck, and there are tall narrow stalls with big, glossy, muscled creatures in them and…
“I…I thought ‘Starfire’ was gonna be like… a vehicle!” I protest, “I dunno, like a cool chembike or a wheeler or even a – a-”
Lux peers back at me, patiently, waiting for me to come to the realization on my own –
It hits me like a brick to the face.
We’re not in Piltover and Zaun anymore. The marvels-and-wonders-of-Progress-blah-blah-pooptover-blah, and the grimy ingenuity of my ol’ town, the reasons the twin cities are famed far and wide…
They just don’t have it here.
A thread of panic grips my chest again, that I’m so far from everything – no junkyards to scavenge – no scrappers or chems dealers to trade stuff with for makin’ my toys – so far from everything I’ve ever…
I’ll deal. I always deal. I’ll find a way. I’ll just have to think out of the box, cuz they just don’t have the shortcuts, here.
But what they do have are real, live, freakin’ horses.
Hers is tall and white and pretty, of course, because if we’re going to be going into a storybook, she absolutely has to be the most storybook thing in it.
The trouble with horses, as I learn, is that unlike chembikes and wheelers and rockets, they like, look at you, and stuff. And you can’t just tell them what to do by connecting the right pipe to the right socket and calibrating the mechanisms just-so.
I don’t know why I’m happy to strap balloons to a giant industrial fan and a saddle seat onto my rocket launcher/minigun combo and I’m grinning ear to ear…
…but the thought of riding one of these fuzzy muscly four legged beasties is just unsettling as heck to me? What the crap?
They also smell kinda funny, but probably so do I, so I can’t really blame ‘em for that.
But looking at Lux, and the way she smiles when she looks at Starfire, and leans her face to the horse’s long nose, and runs her fingers through his mane…kinda makes me wish I was a horse.
And that’s a weird feeling.
“We’ve crossed above Needlebrook and Wrenwall and come in to land near the Greenfang Mountains,” says Lux, as if that means anything to me, “This town’s just a little fishing port off the lake, but it’s ideally situated for skyships since they can cut overland and shorten the journey and we do have the occasional Piltovan trade…”
I’m just watching her groom the horse and natter, figuring she’s probably just laying out her plans for herself as much as me.
“…so it’s three days’ ride from here to Terbisia,” she turns her eyes back to me in a flash of marble blue, “Or four if we’re moving at foot pace, and you are unaccustomed to overland travel. I suppose I could hire you a solid cart and a horse to pull it, if you really want to carry – whatever that is – Jinx – what are you doing?”
“Not getting on one of those beasties, that’s for sure, Blondie,” I mumble, around the spanner in my teeth. Hunkered on the ground just away from all the horse poop, I’ve got Rhino’s bag open, and I’m tinkering, while Lux stares at me, wide-eyed and inquisitive.
“No shade on said beasties,” I spit the spanner into my hand and loosen the last nut, exposing the Hextech rune panel under Rhino’s chompy-jawed noggin, “They’re pretty like you – I mean you don’t have a long skinny face or one big toenail on each foot-” Slide the hatch, unlock the Hexgem – the one I stole from my sister’s glove – “I hope anyway, didn’t get a good look at your feet – and you sure do smell better, like you smell like the sun, that’s super nice – but you get it, pretty horses, yada-yada –”
Lux is going beet red, but I’m tinkering, so I don’t have a filter, “-I just don’t think I wanna go bouncing around on one for three days y’know? I have a super bony butt, if you didn’t notice, you would not wanna see the bruises I had after my first Rhino test-ride, ha ha. We don’t have anything like horses in Zaun – ah there we go, switch out the Balance rune with…if you do this combo here it forms a runic equation suggesting ‘Mass’, and then you can – yep! – reduces the firepower a bit but…”
“Jinx…” Lux’s eyes are big blue saucers as she watches me finish with a “HAH!” and there are some of the ‘stablehands’ peering in at my antics as well.
I put it all back together, charge him up with a faint Hex-hum, and zip the bag, then pull it up into my arms and bounce it a couple of times.
“Try now!” I laugh, “Catch!”
Lux gasps as I toss the monster to her, stumbling to swing her arms up and bracing to be crushed under his bulk – and she blinks as Rhino lands across her arms.
She’s holding him up with relative ease.
“H-how?” she gapes breathlessly.
“Hextech, baby,” I grin ear to ear, and it only flickers slightly when I remember this is what ruined my life, this is what I came to Demacia to get away from…
No, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a precaution. It’s not even a violent one. It’s just…
“I…uh, got the idea from my sister’s Bitch Mittens,” I snicker, proudly, “I mean, her gauntlets. Snuck a look at ‘em one time, they’ve got a combo of runes that makes ‘em lighter, as long as the Hextech is charged.”
Lux looks up at me in awe, but then her eyes flicker past me to the curious stablehands, whispering behind their hands.
“Jinx,” she hisses under her breath.
“…I mean,” I’m scratching my chin, “Probably better not to get it too close to your Petrie-whatsit-”
“Petricite,” she mutters, but she’s carefully putting Rhino down and giving the scallywags back there a piercing, suddenly hawk-like nothing to see here, move along look that makes them go pale and scurry.
“Oh yeah, that stuff, or we might get a sudden uh, bump in carry weight. Whatcha think? Oughta help me keep pace with ya, even if I’m leggin’ it alongside your noble stee-erp!”
I wink at her, then squawk as she grabs my arm and pulls me aside into the shadows of an unoccupied stall.
I’m keenly aware of her flashing blue eyes and the heat in her breath and the proximity of her body to mine, suddenly, but whatever has that feeling in my cheeks again, it’s the last thing on her mind.
“Jinx,” she warns under her breath, “Please be careful. This is Demacia. Magic is still forbidden here except within strict boundaries, and while, yes, I know that Hextech is not strictly the same type of magic…”
She glances outside the stall, but there’s no one visible.
“…not everyone will. Do you understand?”
I’m silenced.
Yeah, I want to say, I do. I just…forgot…because impressing you is…fun but….
…that’s why I came here…cuz I heard it’s the place where you go if you don’t like magic…
Getting away from it…away from Piltover and Zaun…somewhere very far from blue glowing gems and gold-plated puppet people and a cold hungry blue light, beautiful and terrible, that eats up everyone I love.
I can’t say it to her eyes. Because I see what’s in them, an old, painful fear.
There’s a different light here. A warm light.
Your light.
I understand why she’s hiding it, now.
“The laws have changed,” she murmurs, softening her eagle-clawed grip on my arm, “But so recently…it wasn’t long ago you’d have been dragged off by the Mageseekers for what you just did there. They’re gone, now, and you did nothing technically illegal.”
She leaves her own eyes on mine.
There’s something haunted behind them.
“But Demacians have long memories,” she murmurs, “And the Arcane has burned us too.”
I study her face, all its soft curves and sculpted angles made cold by the dim light.
And by her fear.
“Yeah,” I murmur, “I getcha. Sorry, Blondie.”
She smiles at me, a smile of relief, and slips her hand from my arm.
I pick up Rhino and sling him over my shoulder.
“Hit the road, then, I guess?”
“Jinx…” she calls as I’m walking away.
I hear the jingle of the reins as she finishes prepping her horse and leads him out.
I hear something else, too.
A skittering.
It fades quick, but my senses are alive with it, even after it’s gone.
Oh, it’s you again.
Yeah, I’d been aware since the skyship that someone was following us. Heard it in the cargo hold, in the corridors. Somewhere out of sight, out of my nose range too, keeping cautious.
Either it knows how to keep downwind of us, knows how to mask it, or…it doesn’t have a scent at all.
Lux gives me a look. It’s very subtle, but I pick it.
She knows.
“We’ll talk,” she says gently, as she turns to me, “On the road. There’ll be time.”
She slings one leg up and over, a graceful, practiced move that makes a wheel of her white cloak and long hair for a moment, and she’s looking down to me.
“Plenty of time.”
“Okay,” I say, with a smile of my own.
The road lies ahead.