Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.

Chapter Text

My legs are holding up, mostly, despite keeping pace with Lux and her horse. Using the mass control runes on Rhino was a good idea, though, cuz I had noooo idea what kind of ground we were going to be covering and I’m still reeling from the experience…

I can’t believe this Dumbassia place is so fricking big.

There are other words I should use, probably, to get across the real impression. Grand, sweeping, picturesque, vast, stuff like that. The land curves in these big smooth arches from flat to tall, so you can’t get a good read on the horizon and sometimes it looks like you’re walking down a tunnel that’s so big you can’t see the top of it.

Other times it’s just forest as far as you can see, or a river snaking off into the distance like a big old wet mass of veins until it disappears into the glittering of the sun.

We’ve walked and walked and walked and at first it was just one moment of discovery after another for good ol’ Jinx. Flowers? At home, they’re just splashes of color in the picture books and weird, fleshy mutant things growing in the Sump that either spit spores everywhere or try to eat you – here they’re tiny and delicate and smell sweeter than the sugary treats in a Piltie bakery.

I’d only seen ones like this in Topsiders’ window boxes until now. But it’s different when they’re crawling over the hills and valleys, wild, alive, and free…

And then there’s the animals.

The sounds are insane. They don’t make any sense. The first few hours, my brain keeps listening for the familiar hum of engines, the creaking of pipes and thrumming of fans, the sounds of the Undercity’s iron guts digesting like they always do. Instead there’s whistling wind – rasping through the trees and hissing over the rocks instead of rattling the roofs of shanties and making the tottering Spires groan.

And instead of the skitter and slither of Sumprats in the vents and unknown things squishing around in the water, there’s the calls of birds. Not just gulls…and crows…a whole world of birds. Big ones, eagles and hawks, Lux says, soaring up high in the big blue skies. Or little ones, robins and wrens and sparrows and swallows, flitting around in the trees…where other stuff sneaks around in the undergrowth, looking for food, rest, or shelter…

A whole kaleidoscope of calls, making me jump at every new one, making Lux laugh at me more than once, but regard me with a kind of gentle sympathy and curiosity a lot of the rest of the time.

She’s lapping up my every reaction, to every new experience, her bright, intelligent, interested attention never far from the corner of my awareness.

I don’t know why. My voices hiss at me that she’s just making fun of you or she’s using you because she’s bored and it’s only when they land on she’s leading you out here to kill you that I draw the line and shut them out with a growl.

We do talk, on the road. We talk a lot, and bit by bit, the mystery girl finally starts to show me pieces of herself.

We pass under the trees, after the sun’s gone overhead, and the afternoon sun spills through the – she called it a ‘canopy’ – and makes all these neat little patterns of shadow and blobs of light on the forest floor, on the pale arc of my arm where I’m carrying Rhino, on Lux’s cloak, on her hair…

And I can’t help but think the broken-up, dappled specks of light remind me of all those little scattered glimpses of her.

At first, it’s her concern about our mystery follower. She picked up on it, too, on the skyship, and she’s soon cautioning me against everything from Noxian assassins to Piltovan agents to the possibility that one of those Glorious Evolved puppet monsters that the fortune cookie turned everyone into – even my dad – has followed us all the way here.

And might somehow multiply, and cause chaos in Demacia.

It’s only that one that I don’t scoff at. It’s only that one that makes me go quiet as a mouse.

Something else is pretty plain to me, too; she’s got way too many skills to just be some rich decorative girl. I’d sussed that already but those skills are starting to show.

Lux really, really isn’t what she seems.

There are still layers she isn’t showing me, and fair enough. We’ve known each other – what, a week now? Stuff moves fast in my life, I never knew day by day whether Ekko was my best friend or ready to murder me and Vi flipped for a P͡il͜t͏ie ͝E̕nf͡or̕ce̛ŗ scraģ and abandoned our home and me sure did apparently escalate things with Cyclops Kiramman over the course of a couple of days…

But I don’t get the impression this girl’s used to opening up to people. She’s so shiny and sweet I’m sure everyone who meets her falls in love with her on sight and pines after a single flash of a smile, while she’s already moved on before they even get that.

The real ‘Luxanna’? She’s there somewhere they’ll never even get to see, behind walls within walls within walls…

Heh.

I get that. It’s not like I’m easy to get close to. Me? I don’t even have to try to push people away. They usually look at me like I’m a rabid whump about to chew their face off. And they’re not they used to not entirely be wrong.

I’m not a fortress like her, though. I’m a maze, designed by rabid monkeys, bombed, burned, and smashed to pieces, then cobbled back together again.

Who even is the real ‘Jinx?’

And why is she telling me about her life, now?

But she is. It starts with few silly little stories about her brother, Garen, I take it this guy’s a big part of her life. He sounds so boring and stiff I’d want to wedgie his heroic undies halfway up his back on sight, but the way Lux lights up whenever she talks about him – with just that prickle of awkward pain – reminds me of the way Powder I used to be about Vi, and I can’t begrudge her, even if it itches my skin.

I’m going to be better, and being better means listening to other people sometimes, right?

It starts there, and then it cascades.

She tells me about how it all started. Growing up in her storybook castle, thinking the whole world was perfect, good and bad, black and white, as obvious to her as the blue in the sky. Her great, perfect, shining kingdom where everyone was safe and loved, as long as nobody let the bad scary monsters, the mages, do their dark, scary, forbidden magic…

And she was, as I expected, the center of this storybook, princess-in-all-but-title, Little Lux Crownguard, growing from ‘Little Starlight’ to ‘Lady of Luminosity’, the darling child of Demacia, the apple of everyone’s eye…

She tells me about the day it all tumbled down.

The day all that light became more than a metaphor.

An injured horse, a pack of sabrewulves, and something burning in her fingertips, flashing out of her body with her panic, burning them, blinding them, driving them away…

The clanging of the c͢y͟m̕b͘als̵. The flash of blue, blue, blue white, perfect, beautiful, powerful…

The horror in her chest when she realized she wasn’t the princess of the story, not really…

It̵ ̕final͝l͏y̵ w̵ork̀ed͠!͟

She was the monster.

I o̧n̨l͢y̵ want͞èd́ t͡o ͝he͜lp!

There’s a sick look on her face when she recalls it, even now, or maybe she’s reacting to the look on mine.

We’re taking a little rest at a little sheltered spot beneath a craggy overhang, off the path; a creek trickles nearby.

She slips off her riding gloves. Her eyes are the blue of sorrow, now.

“I hated this.”

Her fingers start to glow; it’s very subtle, at first, just a sheen upon the skin of her fingers like she’s dipped her hands in spider-silk.

“Some part of me still does.”

Then it flows along them, catching all the dust and dewdrops in the air above her palm, rising in strengthening shafts until her hand is radiant, almost a miniature sun.

I know I shouldn’t stare at the sun. My eyes were made for the dark.

But I can’t look away.

A sad smile plays at her lips. The light dances and plays on her face, in her eyes.

“Probably the part of me that wishes things could just be easy. That I could go back to pretending everything was fine, just as they told me, as long as I didn’t look, or touch, or know.”

The smile fades. A cool determination, tempered by wisdom, by pain, replaces it.

She looks at me, haltingly, still so full of fear that I’ll hate her for her Light, this freaking miracle she’s showing me, shyly, painfully, like she’s peeling the skin off her soul.

“But I’d have to live a lie. And I can’t. Not anymore. I know.”

And then she tells me about Sylas.

I wonder if she felt it, too, the stab in her chest, when I talked about Ekko. It’s blinding, for a moment, deafening, it blocks out all the rest of her words, and all it is, is that I realize this guy – this man – was close to her.

That there’s something faint in her eyes that meant he meant something to her.

Something raw and complicated and painful.

But it’s not the same at all. And when it’s passed – the screaming wall of questions clawing and scrabbling at my skull – did he t̀o͟u͘ch her? Did he hur̨t her? Did she lov͘e̡ him?! – and I’m actually listening to her words, it’s not like that at all, it isn’t, it can’t be…

A friend, she calls him, someone she was drawn to help, to try to learn about herself from, someone locked in the dark for half his life for the crime of being a mage, for trying to help, for blowing everything up and hurting people he didn’t mean to…

My heart’s ice in my chest.

The more she describes him the more I see of myself – but the far more I see of Silco – this big bad mage rebel determined to tear down the oppressor state and build a free Demacia, sure sounds like they’d have gotten along like a house on fire.

Or maybe killed each other, fifty-fifty.

It’s with a hesitant, awkward pause that makes my heart feel like it’s been crushed into a burning ball of sump-scum that Lux admits she liked him. Just a little. Like ‘that’.

And suddenly my sympathy’s go͘n̸e.

And when she tells me that her family sentenced him to execution; that she tried to intervene, threw herself bodily in the way…

One touch and he stole her power, ripped it out of her, betrayed her, outed her secret in front of everyone and used it to save himself…making Lux a second-hand mass murderer in the process.

She can’t hide that it still hurts. It still hurts her right down to the core.

And suddenly I want to sm̢a̶s̸h͞ h́i͏s ͡fa̶ce̛ ͟i͢nto͘ ͞a̸ ̧stóńe͞ floo͝r̸ untiļ ͏h͝e’s ͜n̢ot̢hin̨g̡ ͡b͠ùt̸ red ̴p̕as͘te͠ a͏n̕d͠ ͡b͜roke̕n̵ ̛tee̕th̡.

I can’t hide it. She sees it in my face. She’s gone very quiet. Solemn.

My teeth are clenched so hard they’re squeaking. Feel like they’re going to crack.

Why do I care so much?

“It’s all right, Jinx,” she says, and her hand’s on mine, and her eyes are soft and wounded, and so is her smile, “I’ve moved past it. He has his cause, and I have mine. I know where I stand, now. Even if it means leaving some things behind.”

Sometimes taking a leap forward means leaving some things behind.

“…did you…”

My voice is cracking, dry, like the dead leaves under our feet.

“…do you love him?”

Lux snaps her gaze up and looks right at me in surprise. Her blue eyes pierce me, unblinking.

She answers both questions without hesitation.

“No.”

Without another word, she stands, slithering away from me, and mounts her horse.

But I saw a flash in her eyes, just a glimpse. Like lightning on distant clouds.

Something cold, hard, and bitter.

And I believe her.

It’s something called a ‘bothy’ that we’ve come to, as the sun goes down. It’s a little, crumbly stone rectangle of a building with a roof that looks like it’s mostly waterproof, perched a little ways away from the road but clearly visible, near a little tucked-away seam of the mountainside cut by a small river.

Something about it, the way it looks like the land’s reclaiming it, right down to the little vines growing up through the stone walls, makes me like the place.

So much of this place is pristine and perfect, it’s nice to see somewhere that isn’t.

“And…no one…lives here?”

“Not permanently,” Lux says, and it’s the first time she’s spoken since we talked about him her past. She’s been riding, staring ahead with that distant, contemplative look on her face, and it’s driving me nuts because my Voices intuition keeps telling me she’s mad at me blaming me hating me still stewing over something.

Maybe it’s just that skittering noise. Heard it a ways back, just after we broke for a small lunch of dried meats and cheeses and some kind of hard but filling bread. Could’ve been any animal in the undergrowth, but it sounded so familiar, we both perked up right away.

And it stopped again. Always downwind, where I can’t smell it.

But I thought I got a whiff, just once, of motor oil.

Lux shakes her head and gives a cheerful little grin. I can’t tell if it’s a real one, and that bothers me more than it should.

“Come on in and see!”

She dismounts Starfire and leads him to a little wooden barn tucked around behind the bothy; when she’s done getting the horse settled in, she unlatches the door and opens it to reveal the little stone room inside. Bare-bones, but it’s cozy, and I’m an Undercity girl, so I could sleep in a drainpipe or a four foot square of dirty concrete. This is lap of luxury stuff. There’s even a wooden shelf or bunk to put your bedding on and a small fireplace.

In Zaun, those are usually run by Chemtech, but here, there’s a neat stack of dry firewood.

I almost blink. I don’t, but it’s closer than I’ve come in a while.

“People just…leave this here? All tidy like this…? And with all this stuff?”

“Mhm!” says Lux, “It’s courtesy. For the next traveler, do you see?”

“And nobody steals it…?” I’m baffled, boggled, “Nobody?”

She’s already unpacking her tidy little bag, checking the shelving of the wardrobe or cupboard looking thing, unfurling a dry blanket.

She pauses, blinks at me, and tilts her head, kinda like a curious bird.

“…why would they?”

I fall awkwardly silent and get busy unpacking my stuff. What little there is of it.

I got on that ship with just my basic tools, my hoodie cloak and a few snacks.

No keepsakes. No mementos, except the doll I made of Isha and what was left of my guns.

Nothing sentimental.

Nothing Jinx, nothing Powder.

A few things behind, well, Other-Me, I left it all.

Lux seems to sense my broodiness and is quick to tug me by the hand outside and show me which herbs and berries are safe to gather from the forest, where to find the best firewood, how to set up a cooking fire outside, and how to make a rabbit trap.

She’s a patient, natural teacher, but it still surprises her, and delights her, when I immediately start making ‘innovations’ to the design.

And we’ve soon got our supper.

Fuzzy little thing, almost too cute to eat; I’ve hunted and eaten a lot worse when I had to hide out in the Sump for a while there. Lux feels bad for it, obviously, but she’s a Demacian and she’s obviously done this before, so it’s barely a flicker before it’s back under her mask.

Cooking with her is another experience I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

“…I can’t actually cook much of anything other than campfire food,” Lux laughs, her shoulder jostling mine as we sit, “House full of servants, remember? Not that it stopped me from trying! I snuck into the kitchens at High Silvermere, once, Little Miss Curiosity, always so sure I’d never meet a skill or bit of knowledge I couldn’t learn…well! I nearly burned down a castle that day.”

My wicked hyena cackle blasts her ears as I’m positioning the rabbit over the firepit, and Lux winces, I’m not sure if it’s at me or herself.

“…a-anywaytheheadchefshowedmehowtobakebiscuits-” Lux stammers, then comes out of her breathless sentence with a grin, “So I can do a mean tray of biscuits! Occasional baked goods. And roasting things on a firepit. That’s all I can cook. Otherwise, I can barely boil water.”

I’m half reaching for my lighter, when, winking, Lux just points at the kindling like she’s making finger-guns, and a thin, intense beam of light – at first rainbow at the edges, then sharpening to blistering white – slashes into the dry stuff like her finger was a magnifying glass.

A respectable fire soon fills our senses with the smell of cooking meat.

“That’s a neat trick, Blondie,” I whisper, huddling against her, grinning, “But if you wanna see how Jinx cooks?”

I casually toss a chemtech capsule from a row of ‘em I keep in a belt pouch, into the fire, and Lux squeaks as it pops garish purple smoke, and then the flames roar a toxic green.

She stares at me like I’m summoning a freakin’ demon.

“Wh-what! What was that?”

“My personal Chem-spice mix!” I croon, “Adds flavor!”

“Is ‘Green’ a flavor now?” Lux darts her eyes between the now-neon rabbit and the monster responsible, “Is it …safe?”

“No idea, Blondie!” my grin is diabolical, as is my wink, “But it is tasty!”

I watch her go through the five stages of grief with the rabbit we’ve so meticulously caught, skinned, prepared and cooked, until she’s finally at ‘acceptance’ and brings the first bite to her lips.

I’m giddy as a kid as I watch her eyebrows shoot up, “Mm-this flavor is-wow, it’s uh, it’s intense, but…” she blinks, “Protector’s grace, this is good…”

“Right?!” I giggle, victorious, “Ol’ Jericho taught me a thing or two, back in the day…” one of the few people who knew me as Powder and then as Jinx and didn’t bat much of an eye at the difference… “…finest street food chef in the Lanes, basically a god of the grill, no-one else like him when it comes to sauces and spices and questionable meat and ‘too much’ fire – pff, as if!”

Lux tears into it with gusto, only remembering after a few bites that she’s a lady, and she has to leave some for me.

And I’ll admit, this is good stuff, cuz the rabbit is lean, clean, gamey meat, tastes a whole lot better than roasted sewer whump and isn’t even likely to give us any mysterious rashes!

“…we know our condiments in Zaun,” I announce proudly, picking the bones, “You gotta, when the meat can be a little, uh, exotic! Gotta match like to like, y’know?”

Lux’s eyes get that curious look again; and it’s where I’d be angry at her if she was some Piltie looking at me like a weird bug that landed on her shoe, except that she’s not a Piltie, Demacia’s never done shit to us, and she just seems genuinely excited by my whole …everything…

“I see,” she says, “I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to try it? I think I’d love to, Jinx.”

Yeah that’s new.

“…what now?” I ask her, when we’re all done with the meal, sitting on a fallen log and watching the fire burn down, our cloaks drawn around us.

It’s getting darker.

“We should get cleaned up,” she clears her throat, “There’s a little pool nearby where we could bathe, away from sight of the road, but we’ll need to be careful if our…follower is near.”

A silence follows it.

“M’cool, Blondie,” I mumble, pushing the thought of water sluicing through her golden hair from my skullbox, “I um…I’m pretty tired, luggin’ Rhino around all day…we could just turn in…”

“Ugh,” Lux chuckles, “What about cleanliness, Jinx? We’ve been traveling all day. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather wash off the sweat and dust of the road before we retire…”

I can’t help it. Don’t do the stupid don’t do the stupid…

My eyes flick sidelong.

“I don’t mind,” I purr at her, doing the stupid, shuffling and leaning in close until we’re arm to arm. I theatrically sniff at her, “I can put up with ‘essence of horse’…if it’s on you.”

“Jinx!” she laughs at me, but her face is going scarlet and her eyes darting around self-consciously.

“Just adds a lil’ spice to your sweet, Blondie,” I wink, “Trust me, I’ve lived above the freakin’ Sump, I’ve smelled a lot worse than you. Than you could ever. Don’t even worry.”

You’ll always smell like the sun.

She’s blushing and laughing, and then she’s just looking at me.

The smile drops away from her face and I wonder if I’ve crossed the line. I can be a gross little gremlin, and maybe my sensory stuffs are more intense than normies, I know, but…

I don’t want to be ‘creepy’. I’m real good at ‘creepy’ but it’s usually on purpose, trying to psych people out.

I don’t want that…not with her…I was just trying to make her laugh, I didn’t mean it, I…

Lux leans in a little closer, her blue eyes on mine, lips parted in a little breath. Words she can’t quite find to say.

We haven’t talked about that last night on the airship. Or that morning.

I don’t know what she was thinking. And I don’t know what she’s thinking now. Behind us looms a silent question in an unassuming pile of stones.

The bothy’s really small, but there are benches, not just the bed space.

We don’t have to do that again.

…even if all I want in the world right now is her warmth.

If she’s mad at me, I’d even sleep outside, if it meant she wouldn’t ever look at me with disgust or anger in her eyes…

I focus on them, fearing.

But those things aren’t there.

“Jinx,” she whispers. It’s almost a little sigh. Nobody ever says my name like that, it’s usually a curse, a scream, a threat…

Lux lifts her hand to my cheek and brushes my bang away.

Her forehead leans and presses to mine. Our breath curls together. Our noses bump.

Skin to skin, she’s so warm.

“…what are we…” Lux closes her eyes, brows furrowing, “…what’s…this?”

They’re questions I can’t answer. I don’t freaking know either.

But it’s nice to know she’s asking them, too.

I guess.

I’m terrified of the answer she might find.

I can’t close my eyes. I can’t look away from her. Every micro-expression. Every twitch of every tiny facial muscle. The storm of thoughts whirling behind them.

My mind’s nearly blank. The fire is dying down.

Lux gives a frustrated little sigh and we’re so close it tickles my lips. Her thumb curves and strokes my cheek…

I don’t think she’s noticed that I’ve started shaking. That I can’t see straight, because what is this what’s happening this can’t be real I’m just a Jinx…

She’s suddenly pulling away.

“…I …um…I think I do want to get clean…before bed…”

No no no what did I say what did I do what did I-

Her hand pulls away last.

She’s facing away from me.

I wait for it. Whatever horrible thing she’s about to say to crush my heart into dust.

“Are you…” she murmurs, then clears her throat, “Are you coming, too?”

I find a little choking sound in my throat.

Lux is picking up her staff, and belting her sword – oh yeah, she’s got a sword, a compact, graceful-looking little thing that I want to see her use someday – at her side.

“…um…are we…” I clear my throat, too, but I still sound like I gargle broken glass, “…are we givin’ our weapons a wash, too?”

Lux gives a flat little laugh, “Ahah, no, I um, we shouldn’t go unarmed, just in case.”

I shrug. Rhino’s huge. I can leave him in the bothy. If they won’t steal firewood, they won’t steal my Rhino. I’d like to see some bandit or whatever be strong enough to even pick him up.

I’ve still got Zapper at my side. Even if I haven’t really fired her since I fixed her up, I don’t even know how I made myself do that after finding her where…

Where she…

It’s funny. What gets left behind. Just her helmet, and what was left of Zapper. Nothing else, not even bones.

Just gone.

Warm. Lux’s fingers are resting over mine.

It pulls me out of it. I swallow the lump, and the grin teases its way back to my face when I see a hint of mischief in her eyes.

“Let’s get you clean,” Lux theatrically sniffs at my hair, repaying the favor, “Thou goblin most foul…”

That pulls me out of my head; “Most foul!?” I scoff at her, glaring, “After I said you were sweet!”

Lux laughs a brighter laugh and tugs me to my feet.

Our noses almost bump again, and the laugh drops off her face, but the smile kinda stays.

Her fingers don’t leave mine.

“You’re assuming I mind,” she winks, “Maybe you’ve sold me on ‘spice’…”

I wonder if I just sat too close to the fire, because my cheeks are blazing hot.

“C’mon,” Lux tugs on my hand, and I’m following her.

We pick our way through a rough little path that Lux calls a ‘goat track’, though I don’t know if she’s being literal, cuz I’ve only ever seen a goat in the Piltie menagerie, and I don’t see any here; but finally, the sound of gurgling water.

Finally, we’re here; a crack in the mountainside above, a secluded little crevice down which white lines of crisp, cold water snake and course and split and join until they form a gushing waterfall that feeds into a little rocky pool with a few trees tucked around it.

There’s runoff like this in the Fissures. There’s always water trickling down from Topside, especially when it rains.

But you don’t wanna trust it, not to drink, not to bathe in, with the exception of some very specific spots. Silco’s eye? Yeah, that started as just an infection, cuz Vander dunked him in Undercity water with a cut eye –

This, though…? It looks, smells, clean and clear, impossibly clean, and I… actually don’t mind the thought of jumping in.

Just soaking in it for a while. Resting in the cold embrace, like the place I was reborn, the place I let him go to rest…

…except maybe this time, I don’t need to fight the urge to sink, too…

“If one of us keeps watch,” Lux says, as we step out of the forest and to the edge of the rocky little pool with the burbling waterfall, “The other can bathe safely, I think.”

“…if…” my brain is a fire hazard. I’m staring doggedly into the water, but it’s crystal clear and my reflection is staring back, not helping at all, “…if one of us w-watches?”

Lux stares at me over her shoulder and then bursts into one of her bright, giggly, bubbly laughs that soon grows shrill and wheezy as she loses control of it.

“Um!” she says, mouth opening and closing a few times, “I…do not object to us…b-bathing together…in s-safer circumstances,” she spells it out, “Demacia has public bath houses and it’s not uncommon for…b-but I mean for safety’s sake one of us should g-guard the other, don’t you think?”

My throat is tight.

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Lux smiles at me, “Guests first…?”

My eyes search hers, and I find a little smile. It’s really hard not to smile at her when she’s smiling at you.

“’Kay.”

I’m quick to peel out of my travel clothes – though I’ll take ‘em with me, they could all use a good wash, I guess. But I’m ‘Demacia dirty’ and with just soil, rain and a tiny bit of sweat on me – I sweat like a lizard since the Shimmer – I don’t even feel dirty at all. ‘Zaun dirty’ means you got dunked in Sump water or cut yourself on rusty metal and are probably covered in sewage and chemical runoff from the factories that’ll kill you in maybe years, maybe hours, if you don’t get clean…

Zaunites keep clean a lot better than Topsiders think. For them? It’s presentation, for us, it could be literally life or death.

Still. This could be … nice?

And part of me can’t help teasing Blondie a little, because as I peel out of my bandage top again, her burning eyes flash-fry my shoulders and chest and then pull away to stare at the ground.

As I strip off my pants, toss ‘em in the water and dive in after them with a yelp and splash at the cold, she’s pretending to fix her belt and standing guard with a steely expression, scanning the path behind us and the forest for any signs of approaching foes.

It’s adorable.

“Ooh, am I a fancy princess too, now?” I grin at her, “I get my own personal bodyguard!”

Lux’s shoulders tense up and she resists the urge to shoot a glare over her shoulder.

“I’m not a princess,” she calls, “My family are adjacent to the royal line. But I would not be …a princess, unless I married a prince and that…” she gets a funny tone of voice, “…is hardly going to happen now. Thankfully.”

I don’t quite know what to make of that. She does sound strangely relieved.

“Don’t all good little Demacian girls aspire to marryin’ princes?” I tease, splooshing around in the water. It slices at my skin, cuts away the grit of the journey with ease. I don’t know the last time I’ve felt this clean, even with the showers on the airship.

It’s like it’s stripping me away with it.

Maybe it is. Maybe this is how I become a new person again, here, reborn in fire n’ water, just like the last times…

“That’s not what I want,” Lux murmurs, “Not really what I ever wanted. Maybe there was a time when being just a loyal servant to the glory of Demacia and House Crownguard would have been enough, but now…I’d rather stand for something, as myself.”

I don’t know how to answer that.

She very much cuts the image of the noble hero, with the mountain breeze tugging at her long golden mane and her hand on the hilt of her sword and her graceful profile staring longingly into the distance.

I gotta poke at that.

“Forsooth,” say I, “…thou hath chosen thy path well, milady. For now, thou art a bold knight, verily, standing watch, to guard my vulnerable, uncloth’d, totally nude body from knaves, blackguards and villains of all kinds!”

Lux makes a small choking sound and then turns it into a laugh, one of her weird squeaky laughs that feel like a crack in all her walls of ‘ladylike’, an oddball freaky little monster of a girl peeking out of the pristine blonde goddess. As a fellow freaky little monster girl, I approve.

Her laugh is a war crime and I love it.

“I’m not looking at you, Jinx,” she says, stubbornly, “I am still a Crownguard and – and propriety…”

She yelps, almost screams, as I splash her.

Before she can stop herself she’s twisted around to give me an open mouthed stare – I get one look at that outraged face before she scowls and pulls her face away.

“Blondie…” I call out to her, unsure of what I’m doing or why, only knowing it’s itching at me, “What if I want you to...?”

“Want you to what, Jinx?” she growls, “Let you make fun of me?”

“Look at me.”

The tension sticks in her shoulders, then slowly bleeds out.

My heart’s thundering. I stand up in the water. I let it roll off me. It’s cold, really cold. But I run hot.

That’s not why I’m shivering.

Lux’s shoulders are moving. She’s breathing hard. I can hear her from here. Fear, uncertainty.

Slowly, she turns to face me.

Her eyes are huge, soulfully blue as they wander over me; my face, first, like she’s absorbing all the minutiae of my features and expressions; then my body, her brows furrowing and lips parting as she does.

I’m not ashamed of it. I don’t really care that I’m skinny and have no tits; don’t show it off for other people to want me. Jinx never had time for that. But Jinx was everything Powder never could be. She was stylish, scary, cool and awesome, she looked so baddass with her bullet belts, her braids, her boots, her guns, and yeah, her freaking awesome circus tent pants, screw you, Officer whoever you were…

I’m not her anymore, probably. Her shadow, I guess, that’s the most that’s left. But I’ve still got her taut tummy and gaunt muscled arms. I’ve still got her tattoos – my tattoos – and I’ve still got all her faint, faded scars, almost lost in the white of my skin.

I’m not proud of a lot of things. But I am proud of that Jinx, the Jinx smirking like a devil in the mirror.

I know I look good.

Lux looks at me like she’s having a religious revelation. I’m smiling at her, as soft a smile as I’ve ever given, but she looks stricken and conflicted, fighting with herself, and for a horrible second, I wonder if she thinks I’m-I’m …ugly…

…she’s so beautiful, in all the ways people are supposed to be beautiful… maybe I’m just not…

But her cheeks are cherry red, and her eyes keep wandering my shoulders and tits and abs and tummy and…

Lux breathes out, visibly trembling.

Then she bites her freaking lip, and at the sight of her little even white teeth pinching that soft strawberry-pink flesh, a fire lights somewhere just under my belly.

And she shrugs off her cloak and unbuckles her belt; she’s wriggling out of her top. She’s stripping down, without a word, and without breaking her gaze from mine until she has to for the undershirt to go over her head.

My breath hitches as she bares fields of soft, healthy skin, toned arms and shoulders, the swells of small round breasts tipped with warm pink like her lips, faint hint of abs under her sleek tummy…

…and, then, as she’s shyly stepping out of her leggings…well, she’s definitely a natural blonde.

My heart’s making noises like the drummer at a Scratch concert and that’s not the only reaction I’m having and my skin suddenly feels like I’ve just pulled a Chomper on myself again…

…What is this? I haven’t…I’m a Jinx…I don’t think about people like this…I don’t…I mean sure I grew up down the street from Babette’s, I’ve seen stuff, gotta tell Blondie the story sometime about when I got my first bleed and Silco panicked and told Sevika to give me ‘the talk’…

But I haven’t…cared…? About any of it? Never. Kinda funny, kinda weird, kinda gross, didn’t spark nothin’ for me. Not so much as a tingle in my jinglies. Only thing that ever came close was the feeling when my trigger-finger’s down and the barrels are blazing and the bombs are boomin’ and the fires are burnin’ and everything’s dissolving into blazing, perfect, blinding, blissful light…

…like hers.

My eyes focus.

…Lux is shining.

One moment, she’s just a naked girl, standing on the shore, tiptoeing slowly toward the water with the exact same timid motion as that little deer we saw drinking by the stream a few miles back.

Then her eyes meet mine and she bites her lip again, and there’s a pale glow sheening over her skin, lighting up the darkening evening. It’s very subtle, at first, but she’s luminous, she starts looking like a water-nymph, a spirit, a feyrie, a ghost…all those old storybook things that can’t possibly be real…

Except the last one. I’m well familiar with ghosts.

But she’s not one.

She’s flesh and blood. She’s real, I can feel her heat as she wades into the cold water, dips herself under and rises in a glittering, gasping wave of wet hair and glistening skin.

Her eyes latch to me again, and soon she’s smiling a strange, wondering smile that dies away to something soft and small and scared. She draws close to me, tearing her eyes from mine to look down at her glowing hands, the threads of light cascading as they move in ripples down her body and spear into the air around her. Her hair is a river, glittering and sparkling when she moves.

She’s sunlight, starlight, moonlight, all together in one. She’s a living explosion, shiny flashy boom, but somehow silent, and soft, and soothing at the same time.

She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, even more beautiful than the blue light of the monkey bomb, the blue light of Fishbones’ roar, the blue light that took Isha and Vander from me…

And she might be even more dangerous.

“…how are you doing this to me,” Lux whispers, her voice trembling, “…why are you doing this to me…?”

My own voice is very small in reply. If I still blinked, I still wouldn’t. I wouldn’t miss a flicker of the sight of her.

I can answer both questions at once.

“I don’t know.”

Lux’s brows tremor, and her eyes – glowing like mine, now, but golden-white – lift to mine.

She raises her hand. Our fingers thread. She’s warm, soft, and tingling with power.

“Jinx,” her voice is silk-soft, full of fear and hurt, but none of it is my fault, not yet, “I have to tell you…”

My heart’s even louder, somehow. I wonder if I’ll even hear what she has to say.

“M-my body, my heart…” Lux murmurs, close to me, I can see the dewdrops on her lashes and the heat on her cheeks, “They aren’t easily given.”

“I know.”

My brow presses to hers, my soggy blue bangs crushed to her glowing gold.

“I don’t…do this,” she’s shivering, but she’s blazing hot, so I know it’s not the cold, “Any of this. For anyone. With anyone.”

Her lashes flutter. Her teeth rest on her lower lip. It’s so soft and pink it’s nearly translucent.

I’m slowly realizing what I want to do, and it rocks me until my knees wobble under the water.

My hand brings hers to my lips and I brush them over the backs of her knuckles. Her Light tingles in my flesh, catalyzing with my darkness.

“Please,” Lux breathes, looking right at me, “Please don’t hurt me.”

I…

The flinch rips through me.

But…I…

I’m twitching, pulling away.

I just wanted to help!

“I…”

I can’t find the words through my trembling lips.

“B-blondie I…”

All my swagger bleeds out of me.

I’m scrunching up my eyes, I can’t look at her, but her Light is reflecting in the water I’m staring at, so I crush my eyes closed and smack my fists against my temples.

I hear a little cry of shock from her, “Jinx, I- I’m sorry…! What did – what did I-”

“…blondie,” it’s cracking my lips like acid bubbling on my tongue, “…g-get away from me…”

There’s a hurt little gasp of breath that I feel like a punch.

And I’m gone, tearing my legs through the water as I fling myself to shore and huddle, shivering, on the rough cold stones.

She’s behind me, still in the water, staring after me, and I can feel her fear and uncertainty and hurt crashing against the bony curve of my back.

And all I want in the world is to lie to her.

To answer her with what she wants to, needs to, hear.

To promise her.

I’ll never hurt you.

But I can’t.

Jinx is many terrible things. Shitty, bad, awful things. But she’s not a liar.

“…I’m a jinx,” it’s broken glass, bitter poison, “…didn’t you figure that out? I…wouldn’t be here if I…didn’t hurt people.”

My breath is coming in big, thick, gulping sobs.

“I hurt everyone, Lux…”

The water is silent behind me.

“Jinx stands for Jinx.”

Mylo, Claggor…Vander…Silco…Ekko…even Caitlyn and her stupid dead mom…

…Vi…

…Isha.

“Everyone who gets close to me dies.”

I hear her intake of breath.

“The one time I thought I was okay,” it’s spilling out of me. It’s so stupid, I want to stop talking, I can’t stop talking, she’ll hate me, she’ll leave me for sure, “…one time I thought it was all going to be okay…”

The tears are there, silent, burning rivers of Shimmer on my cheeks. I can’t even cry without bleeding monster juice. Because that’s what monsters do.

“…Isha…she…she didn’t care I was a Jinx, she didn’t want Powder back…she just…looked at me and saw a hero…a big…fat…stupid hero…and she…”

I’m staring at my gun belt. At Zapper. I patched them up – I let them become her in my head because she’s Isha’s now – but there’s still – still scarring on her where all those Hexgems blew and melted everything, everything down to dust and ash…

I’m tears and snot, hopeless. I don’t know why I’m spilling all this to Lux.

But something about her is just…easy. Like she’s just…there to listen.

No-one else would listen.

“…when Van-when my wolf dad got – got hurt – lost control – he was just…melting down everywhere, he was in so much pain – I think she just…I think she just wanted him to stop hurting…she took my gun…” I kick Zapper away with a scream, “She took my stupid gun and she–she did something stupid…reckless…she did what a Jinx would do and she-”

I’m amazed all this is in there. I never told anyone. I never breathed a word to Vi. Why would I? She saw it all.

She saw it all happen and she didn’t even talk to me. Never even asked me who Isha was, where she came from, why she did what she did…

Undercity kids like us don’t dwell on sentimentality. Undercity kids skin our knees? We just get told to get back up again. We swallow our pain and move on.

One thing Vi could never admit, that I could never escape…

Swallowed pain?

It’s still…

…there.

“She sounds very brave,” says Lux, solemn, like she cares, like my pain is sacred to her.

I flinch.

“Yeah,” I rasp, laughing, stupid, “…very brave. Very dead. That’s all very brave gets you.”

I hate that I can’t even talk about her without the bitter poison stinging on my tongue.

“I didn’t know her,” says Lux, “But I don’t think she would have seen it that way.”

A snarl chokes in my throat, but I can’t…I can’t say anything nasty.

She’s right.

Isha would have liked her.

They both shine so bright.

Lux pauses, then tentatively pushes, “…But – not everyone, right? You told me – your friend – your sister…?”

It takes me a while to reply. Just the echoes of her voice on the pool and the rush of the waterfall.

I squeeze my eyes shut again. Hug my skinny knees.

“S’why I had to go, Blondie,” I whisper, “They’d never…ever stop trying…to reach me. To fix me.”

My head shakes. I tuck my cheek to my kneecaps.

“…only a matter of time,” I mutter, “If I couldn’t even protect a kiddo…just a matter of time before it got them too. Unless I was gone.”

She swallows silence. Waiting for me.

“…promised him I wouldn’t go like that,” I’m rambling, “He tried s-so hard to save me…rewound time itself, you know that? Crazy. Dunno how many times he watched me die, watched me burn up and my guts and bits going everywhere, rewound it and tried again and again, just trying to find that one thing to say…”

The tremors are going through me. Maybe it really is just cold now.

“…so he’s gotta carry that now…so, I won’t do it again. I won’t,” The dark water is just water now. It doesn’t call to me anymore, “I wanna be here. I wanna live. I wanna be someone better than Jinx.”

A bitter little laugh.

“…I was even thinking of changing my name again, I just…couldn’t think of what, and then you had to go say…that ‘Jinx’ can mean what I want…and I…I thought maybe I could…try.”

The water’s moving. Very softly. I hear her drawing closer; feel the warm tingling of her Light. It’s dying down, now, as her feelings shift. I guess magic’s like that, when it’s not all locked up in runes…

“But I won’t, Blondie…” my voice is a raw little rasp, “I won’t hurt you. I can’t…jinx you.”

My heart’s growing colder.

“So…I better go.”

Closing my eyes, I reach out and snag my stupid soggy pants.

“…yeah, I’ll go…”

I’m starting to push myself up, when I hear the rush of water.

Something slaps against my back; trembling, cold, and wet.

It’s Lux.

Her arms flash around me and pull me back into her body. Lock, with all her strength, holding me tight.

She won’t let me get up.

Her face is pressed into my back. The soft of her breasts and stomach, the warm cage of her legs, sodden tendrils of her hair, she wraps me up and presses me into her.

She won’t let go.

“…No,” she whispers, “No you won’t.”

“Luxie…” I’m fighting thick, throat tearing sobs. She can’t do this. She can’t.

“I should never have said that. I should have known better,” she murmurs, “I’m sorry. But you won’t go. I won’t let you.”

I don’t have a reply; it strangles in my throat.

“I’m never letting you go, Jinx.”

“…but…but I’ll hurt you…”

“I won’t let that happen, either,” she says, and I feel her butterfly lashes against my back; the brush of her nose.

The press of her lips to my wet, bare skin.

“I can be strong enough for both of us,” she says.

“That’s…that’s not fair…that’s not fair to you…”

Light flares.

She’s turned her hands. Her skin is glowing. Threads of energy twine about her fingers, iridescent, weaving together and splitting apart…

Turning into spectral butterflies, formed of rainbows of darting light, rising from her palm to brush my cheeks, kissing my tears away with their tiny, diaphanous wings, warm as sunlight.

“If this isn’t a curse,” she says, stronger, “Neither are you.”

The moon’s rising above us.

I turn to face her.

Glowing eyes, mine and hers, in the slowly growing dark.

“Lux,” my throat is dry; my tongue clings to her name.

Gleaming fingertips brush my cheek.

“I…don’t want to hurt you,” I swallow.

I’m about to promise something I can’t keep.

But I’m not a liar.

So if I say my next words I have to mean them, even if it means I bleed for it, even die for it. I’ve bled for worse; I’d bleed my last drop for her before I’d…

“I won’t hurt you,” it’s almost a growl, “Not you. Not ever. And if I ever break that promise…you can kill me. I won’t even try to stop you.”

Her blue eyes are over my shoulder, luminous, moons unto themselves.

“I won’t,” she says, “Because you won’t.”

I don’t know what the heck I did to earn her faith.

But I have it.

More precious than a thousand hexgems, and a million times rarer.

Lux leans forward, still hesitant.

“…I…” she licks her lips.

She’s looking at mine.

“…Jinx I…there’s something that I think I want to…do.”

My heart’s going thunka dunka again.

“But…not …when you’re upset,” she’s halting, trying to find the right words, “I don’t want anything…between us to be colored by pain and regret…if that makes sense.”

I think it does, so I just wordlessly nod.

“…when the time’s right, and if…” her voice is low and warm and steadying through her carefully chosen words, “…when we’re both sure. If this is… if it’s what you want too…if it’s what I think is happening.”

Both her hands are on my cheeks now.

She’s so warm.

“I don’t want to hurt you either.”

I’m breathing hard, my brows furrowing, my eyes burrowing into hers.

I can’t speak, I just nod a weak, quavering little nod.

“…until that moment comes,” Lux breathes a sweet promise, so close to me, pressing her forehead to mine, “Will you let me be your friend?”

It stings. It hurts. But it means so much to me to hear her say it.

“…yes.”

What more can I say but ‘yes’?

Her sweet smile curves.

“We should get out of the cold…” a little bubble of a laugh, “…and put clothes on. Um. Dry clothes.”

She starts to get up, sliding past me, glorious and golden and naked as the day she popped out of whatever goddess spawned her.

I catch her hand.

“…c-can I…” my tongue is the only part of me that’s dry, “…c-can you hold me…again…tonight?”

Lux peeks back at me.

“Hmmm,” she muses, “…well, it’s only going to get colder…and I’ll need a hot water bottle. Once the fire goes out.”

A little scoff-laugh ignites in my throat.

“Mhm,” I lick my lips. I wish I was licking hers. But the thought of going back to that little space, lighting a fire, and snuggling into her arms again…

I can’t pull any more of my hurting aching hollow stuff out of me.

I feel emptied out and numb. It’s better than twisted and screaming, I guess.

But the thought of just …lying there.

Saying nothing.

Wrapped in her.

…yeah, yeah I want that.

“…please.”

Her face descends. I feel the soft, soft press of her lips to my forehead.

“As you wish,” she says, and stands, offering me a hand.

She’s not glowing now, but she isn’t wearing anything. And neither am I.

And it doesn’t matter at all.

What else am I gonna do?

I take her hand.

And with the other, I reach for my damn clothes.

Chapter Text

We’re almost back at the bothy, squelching and shivering all the way; but the bothy means the fire, and the fire means we can dry our clothes and ourselves…

It’s not the worst.

I expected to hate it. To find it terrifying. It’s all so flat and open and horizontal…no towers to climb, no fissures to delve, no pipes or tunnels or drops to hide in…just trees and rocks and mountains and roads and fields and…

It’s all so huge, so open, I feel more naked under the sky than I did in the waterfall pool.

I feel like I could just fall upward into that starlit sky and scream out all my pain and it wouldn’t even mind. It’s all so huge, and I’m so small, surely it could take it.

Surely it could take it all away.

But there’s a warm hand in mine, grounding me, keeping me earthed.

And the stars aren’t the only light.

“Not long and we’ll be warm,” she smiles at me.

“…think you’re always warm, Blondie,” I smirk back at her.

A flicker of a bashful grin from Demacia’s ‘not-princess’; she’s such a freaking dork.

How is she here with me…?

Gotta say, roughin’ it Demacian style is starting to grow on me.

Her hand is still in mine.

I don’t know how to take this.

I don’t know what it means.

She’s my friend.

I know what that means. I think. I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve had an uncomplicated friendship in my whole freaking life. Little Man, once upon a time, when we were just kids…I think, putting aside all the Firelight murders and near-death duels and dating kissing cuddling probably I don’t know getting cute with some perfect me-not-me girl in another timeline, that’s the part he really misses most.

But friends don’t normally sit up and hold you the whole night through. Friends don’t keep staring at your lips, right? Friends don’t go red as a sunset in the smog whenever they catch a glimpse of a bit of your skin.

But she’s…fancy. Super fancy.

And I don’t know anything about this Demacia place outside of what I’ve seen, heard, tasted touched and smelled of it, outside of what she’s told me. And all those little hints – that she’s someone important, that they’d probably want to cut my fricking head off just for looking at her, talking to her – let alone getting naked with her in a waterfall – putting my dirty Trencher hands in her perfect sungold hair – whatever –

And then she looks at me and says friend, and I…don’t know if she’s pushing me away or just…giving me time.

I know she’s right.

I know I’m not ready.

I got too many raw open wounds for whatever the heck is happening to me whenever she’s close to me.

But I don’t want her to go.

It feels impossible.

Like a dream I’m gonna have to wake up from.

And some part of me is tense as a springtrap, my guts and spine all coiled up under the warm sweet unfamiliar perfect feelings.

Guess I’m wondering how rude that awakening’s gonna be.

We’re almost at the bothy and I’m about to make a stupid joke when my ears perk and my spine prickles with tension.

I hear it.

Something’s here with us.

Skittering.

In the underbrush, ahead of us, further down the path.

Our old friend.

It’s downwind of us. Smart.

Cautious, staying out of our sight. It doesn’t sound like it’s large. That might be a good thing.

I give Lux a squeeze of my hand and her questioning glance freezes up when she realizes.

But she doesn’t let it show. She’s smart, too. Her hand slips from mine, half-concealed in my cloak, and brushes her sword hilt.

I have my Zapper. My thumb strokes over her guard and grip.

That’s what screws us up. We’re so focused on the skittering in the bushes, we don’t hear soft paws on the path at our back.

Lux yelps, suddenly; she’s tipping backward, her cloak yanked behind her, the hem caught in the jaws of a big grey – a really big, lean, shaggy, blue-grey dog –

A wolf.

Another one pounces in from the left, going for her legs – I don’t have time to draw and fire, I just tackle the thing.

I’m tumbling, arms wrapped around the beastie’s shaggy rust-brown neck, using basically my whole body weight and a good deal of Shimmer strength to shove and push it into the rocks by the road; but it’s damn strong too, and has more body mass than I do, so it’s quick to wriggle away.

And its jaws twist to bite for my face – my eyes are trails of pink as I dodge away – it bunches its body up to pounce after me.

A rock hits it in the side of the face and it stumbles. I don’t see who threw it; I don’t care, right now.

I’ve pulled Zapper. My finger’s on the trigger.

A flash of blinding Light gives me pause; wolves yelp, and Lux is suddenly on her feet, gleaming steel hissing in her hand and drawn up in a combat stance.

One of the big animals comes in, quick and low, but Lux is quicker. Efficient, wasting no movement, she pulls low and sidesteps; the sword punches behind the wolf’s bounding forelimb and slips between its ribs.

The wolf stumbles and tumbles into a limp pile of fur and that gives the others pause. At least six, glowing pairs of eyes circling in the shadows of the trunks.

The eyes squint and shy away when Lux lifts her other hand, and her staff – from across the freaking camp site – flies spinning into her grip, the twining golden tines glowing with a gathering ball of her Light.

She holds it up like a beacon, like a flare, and between that and her steely eyes, they start backing away from her…

Zapper’s heavy in my grip. I’m fighting – two animals inside me – one of them, old and familiar, screaming to fight shoot run dodge shoot shoot SHOOT –

And the other shrieking, tensing, locking up. Holding me back.

What the hell…

Lux is fighting alone, and all I can do is growl and kick at the wolf near me as it picks itself up. My shaking hand points Zapper at it and I –

Blue light, BLUE LIGHT-

Snarling, I club the creature on the top of the skull with Zapper’s handle as it lunges and snaps its jaws at me.

It’s quick, lean and tough.

But I’ve fought a much bigger wolf.

One shot and I could end this quick and move on to help Lux but I – I –

There’s that beast smell in my nostrils and –

Lux whirls and twists that staff of hers and a flash of light smacks the wolf in the face and sends it yelping and scurrying for the woods. She’s driving them back, driving them off, we’re going to get out of this, even without me, she’s winning…

I snarl at the fleeing beast and turn to dash to her side –

I’m knocked on my tiny ass by a wall of blue and grey and purple fur.

“Jinx!” I hear Lux’s sharp cry, but I can’t see her.

All I can see is teeth, and blazing, glowing eyes.

Two sets.

Green eyes left, blue eyes right…

The beast pinning me down is a giant hulk of a wolf, all muscle and scars torn through thick coarse fur, and I’m pinned under its weight, twisting and dodging like a mad snake to try to stop it from getting its teeth into me and it’s harder than you’d think even with my Shimmer speed working for it because the thing has two heads…

But I’m not seeing straight because it’s scratching and scribbling and the green eyes and the blue and the toothy snarling maw are blurring together –

And all I see is Vander, his twisted, bestial face, his bloody jaws, screaming in pain, blue eye, green eye, melting away into fire…

I’m screaming, too, shrieking spittle and panic into the teeth that are trying to kill me.

I have Zapper shoved into left head’s teeth. My finger’s on the trigger.

The half-melted trigger. I never could get it to bend back right.

The blue glow is rising within, the Hextech charging, jammed right in those ugly teeth, and all I have to do is squeeze.

And I- I can’t-

I can’t.

I see smiling golden eyes…

…dissolving away...

Blu͝e̷ ̵l͢ig̀h̷t҉.͜

Teeth clench, it tears Zapper from my grip. The light flickers as the gun clatters away on the muddy stones.

Lux is screaming, flashing light, but she let herself get distracted and the whole pack is swarming her…while the alpha kills me.

There’s only the hot meat-stinking jaws in my face and only my skinny arms to keep them away.

And then there’s a skitter.

Something bursts out of the undergrowth. Dashes right past Lux and her light, swamped by the emboldened pack; it’s in the corner of my eye, just movement –

A little ball of force and fearless and fierce crashes into the two-headed wolf. A stick – a freaking stick! – jabs it in one green eye and smacks down on its snout.

I’m slammed to my back, arms before my face lowering, shaking, my eyes nearly bursting out of my head, my heart stops.

The wolf growls and snaps and slavers. One head closes its jaws on the stick and rips the wielder off its feet - the other jaws snap on air – not fast enough! – as the tiny figure grapples the furry face, buries its face in the wolf’s right-hand nose and bites it.

The wolf’s left head barks in pain and crunches teeth down on its assailant; the teeth squeal on steel and it backs up, shaking its heads, hurling the little figure to the ground –

It doesn’t stay down. It’s leaping, arms spread, in front of me, between me and the wolf.

A silent scream leaves my throat, just like then, as the wolf pounces.

Whup-whup-whup-

Lux’s spinning staff flashes past us both, and two scintillating, rainbow bubbles swell into being around me and my protector.

The wolf smacks into them, slavering and snarling, the light somehow draining its attack of its force. The staff whirls past on the return, and the bubbles grow brighter.

I can’t move, or speak, or do anything but stare at the little silhouette in a Demacian helmet five sizes too big standing shrouded in the Light.

Something that can’t be r̵e҉al.

Not͞ ̴r͠eal.͟ ̧In̨ ͝my ͟he͜a͟d̛!͝

Something imp̵oss̕i͘b̸le.

Im̡p̨o̢s̀s̴i͟ble!

Then the staff hits Lux’s hand and she throws it out again, floating just in front of her, and she’s floating too, her angel’s face is a thing of ice and iron and now she’s an angel of death.

The staff spins like a fan in front of her and the Light becomes brighter and brighter, all colors and none – a second sun – a thin line snaps through the wolf like a spear and blazes into a white-hot beam of blinding radiance.

The two-headed wolf disintegrates into ash and dust. The rest of the pack flee in terror.

It doesn’t matte̛r̀.

Not̢h͞ing ͘m̛at͞te̡rs͜.

Nothi͠ng̵.

But.

The little figure turning to me, squinting, bathed in an angel’s perfect Light.

The two most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, and the most impossible.

The Demacian helm wiggles away and thuds into the dirt. Dust and mud and twigs and dirty bloody scratches. Scars, like blue-gold veins, cracks at the edges of her temples, hidden in the mess of hair that was maybe once blue.

Golden eyes, though, those are just the same.

So is her lopsided smile.

Lux is running to our side, but her steps slow, and stop, and her eyes widen and widen, the pale light in them washing away to blue-eyed wonder.

She sees, and somehow knows.

Nothing matters.

Nothing.

Because as the shivering, broken cry spills from me, and my arms come up, and I’m gulping for air, the little body collides with mine, short arms sweeping around my skinny torso, stinking to the stars of sweat and muck and – motor oil – but real and here and i̶͝m̷p͡o͟ss͞i̶̧b̷l̵̸͜e̢ im͜possib̨le impossible – alive.

It’s Lux who looks at me, while I’m shaking and sobbing and raining kisses on my scrunglebean’s filthy hair and filthier face.

It’s Lux who, very gently, voices it, making it real.

The Impossible.

“…Isha?”