Chapter Text
It must be around seven in the afternoon when Lux and Jinx finally stop to rest for the night. Lux's feet are sore from all the walking on uneven ground, as well as stepping on stones which were too small to notice at a glance, but still large enough to almost trip her; still, she feels uneasy about the prospect of giving the guards time to catch up to her and Jinx.
“Are we sure we should stop?” She inquires, nervously rubbing her own arms. “What if the guards find us here?”
Jinx looks at her with a raised eyebrow, yet a hint of a smirk on her lips.
“Don't worry, blondie,” she says, starting to take off her bags and set them down on the floor of the small clearing they’ve stopped at, “they’re unlikely to even be actively searching for you yet. At least, not this far into the forest.”
“What about the bounty hunters?”
Jinx scoffs.
“Definitely won’t find us here, if they’re still looking for us at all.” Noticing Lux’s hesitance, she adds: “Anyway, it’s way too dark to travel right now. I’ve got my flashlights, and you’ve got your magic, but that would draw way too much attention. Most people don’t walk through the woods when it’s pitch black out. Who knows what could be hiding in the dark at this hour.”
Lux looks around nervously, suddenly extremely aware of her surroundings. For a split second, she thinks she can spot a pair of eyes shining in the darkness of the trees beyond the clearing, but they vanish when she blinks.
“That’s... surprisingly cautious of you.” Lux says, casually, in an attempt to make her uneasiness go away. It only half-works.
“You think way too highly of me.” Jinx scoffs again. “If I were alone, I’d probably just keep going, but I don’t wanna put you in danger. Not again.” The last words are said under her breath, muttered, almost, but Lux catches them nonetheless. “Anyway, Vi and Cait are always bugging me about being more ‘prudent,’ whatever the hell that means, so I figure this might be a good exercise on patience or whatever.”
“That’s fair.” Lux sighs and sits down on the ground, leaning her back against a tree. She squints at Jinx, trying to clearly make out her features in the ever dwindling light. “It’s getting way too dark. I can barely see you.”
Jinx abruptly turns to look at her, immediately finding her, and the only way Lux can tell that at all is because her eyes, now impossibly more pink, glow in the dark, a couple of uncanny violet circles against a silhouette in the growing dark of the night. Lux’s mind is instinctively brought back to her earlier comparison of Jinx to a big feline predator, but it doesn’t feel quite right; the way her irises shine is not natural whatsoever, and a bit frightening, but also strangely compelling at the same time. It makes Lux slightly jump in surprise.
Judging by Jinx’s reaction, it becomes clear to Lux that in addition to her eyes glowing, they can see clearly in the dark as well:
“What’s wrong?” Her silhouette grows closer; Lux can hear her approaching footsteps on the beaten dirt making up the ground of the clearing, her pace indicating worry.
“Nothing!” She hurries to reassure her. “It’s just... your eyes. They glow.”
Even in the very dim lighting, Lux can tell Jinx seems to pause for a second.
“Oh.” Her voice is strangely subdued, measured, even. “Yeah, that.” She hesitates for a couple of seconds before asking, in a tone that makes Lux able to picture the wince on her face: “Does it freak you out?”
“No, not at all!” She says, quickly. “It just surprised me. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s... really pretty, actually.” The last part, which was supposed to be just a thought, comes out without Lux’s explicit concern, making her immediately blush, and she’s grateful for the dark for a second before remembering Jinx probably has some sort of night vision. She silently curses her rebellious tongue.
“You’d be the first to think that,” Jinx says after a few seconds which feel strangely tense, “but, thank you. I’m gonna go find some firewood to keep warm.”
“Won’t a fire attract attention?”
“Not that much. It's pretty common for people to light fires in the woods during the night to keep warm, and so they can see. If anyone somehow this far out into the woods passes by and happens to see the light, they’ll probably just assume it’s some people camping for the night and move on.” Lux hears her draw closer, still, the dirt shuffling under her boots. “I won’t get far at all, but if someone tries to fuck with you, scream. If, for whatever reason, you can’t scream,” Lux feels a gentle, calloused warm hand slowly, cautiously enveloping hers, and another one not unlike it pressing a cold metal device onto her palm, “pull the round pin on the top and press the button on the side. It’ll make a hell of a lot of noise, so be prepared to have your ears ringing for a while, but I’ll know you’re in trouble and come running. I’ll be right back.”
Lux nods, forgetting about the dark for a second, before yet again remembering Jinx can most likely see her despite it. The taller woman lets go of her hand and walks off into the trees, presumably searching for dry wood they can use to kindle a fire.
Lux stays where she is, not daring to even get up in the nearly pitch-black darkness, clutching the device Jinx has put into her hand. She briefly thinks of gathering some stones from the ground to make a proper fire pit, but immediately ditches the idea and decides to simply keep sitting where she is. She can still clearly hear Jinx’s footsteps nearby, thinks of the girl’s agility and grace, and wonders if she’s making noise on purpose to reassure Lux, as well as to scare away any wild animals who might be prowling nearby.
After what feels like several minutes, the air having grown significantly chillier to the point Lux has started to hug herself, her teeth lightly chattering, she hears Jinx’s footsteps draw closer, spots her dark silhouette against what little light the stars and the crescent moon provide. She hears her drop an armful of what sounds like dry twigs and branches on the ground a few feet away from Lux, then hears a faint mechanical sound before a small flame flickers in the middle of the clearing, originating from a device in Jinx’s hand. Lux’s eyes initially scream out in protest against the sudden light, no matter how small it is, but they quickly grow accustomed to it. Jinx’s violet eyes seem to shine against the glow of the fire from the small device in her hand; her face looks strangely unreal illuminated by it. Lux can see that the firewood on the ground has been arranged, albeit somewhat haphazardly.
When Jinx approaches the flame to the wood, it slowly catches fire, and starts to gradually spread, before its warmth starts to seep into Lux’s cold body. She scoots a little closer to the fire, and Jinx plops down next to it.
Several seconds of awkward silence pass before Lux speaks up:
“So... mind if I ask you about your eyes?”
Jinx stares at her for a minute, a ghost of a bitter smile making its way onto her lips.
“Ever heard of Shimmer?” She asks, subdued.
Lux searches her brain, recalls Garen mentioning it a couple of times. “That’s a drug of some sort, right?”
Jinx nods, slowly.
“More than a drug. That thing’s... what it does to people isn't right. It changes them, forever. Turns them into monsters, or into sorry echoes of the people they used to be. I’ve seen so many people get destroyed by it, seen it poison Zaun, and... and I helped it spread.” She pauses, gazes into the fire in contemplation. “Anyway, I got fucked up pretty bad in a... I guess you could call it a fight, but that wasn’t really it. My dad found what was left of me and did whatever he could to save me. I was pretty much dead already, so that meant the only option was Shimmer.” She pauses again, her face growing distant. “It burned like a motherfucker, and it changed me, but it kept me alive, I suppose, if you can even call it that. At the time, it felt like a curse, and sometimes it still does, but I guess it beats being dead. Plus, it gave me some cool tricks. Like being able to see in the dark.”
Her words are seemingly light, but her tone is anything but, and her voice sounds distinctively empty and tired.
Lux considers her next question carefully.
“Does it... hurt, still?”
Jinx raises her eyes to look at her, a low-key sad expression on her face.
“Sometimes. There are times every single bone in my body hurts. Pain isn’t the only lingering effect of it, either. I feel way too hot all the time, and I normally can’t sleep. Some of the few times I can, I get woken up by my whole body burning. Not that I need as much sleep as everyone else, so I guess it’s not that big of a deal.”
“That sounds awful,” Lux says, in genuine sympathy. Jinx only shrugs in response.
“It’s pretty shit. But there are some benefits to it, too. Most people can’t keep up with me in a fight these days, I can see in the dark, and I don’t have to waste so much of my time with sleep.”
“I suppose everything has a bad and a good side to it,” Lux sighs, holding her head up with her hands, her elbows leaning on her knees. She stares at the fire for a couple more seconds, before adding, bitterness creeping into her voice: “Well, except for my tower. That was just mostly bad.”
Jinx just stares at her with that infuriatingly undecipherable look on her face, the one that told Lux she was most likely being meticulously scrutinized. The taller woman looks at her with a certain cautious, clearly expecting her to continue because she can tell there’s more to it than that.
She’s not wrong, Lux figures, and so she obliges:
“I mean, it could be worse, I guess.” Lux’s voice is strangely shallow, devoid of emotion, as she gazes at the flames dancing in front of her, slowly but surely growing bigger. “I had food, a bed, everything Garen sent me. But...”
Lux finds herself unable to continue. After a couple of seconds, Jinx says, her voice gentle:
“But you knew you shouldn’t be there in the first place.”
For some reason, her words make something snap in Lux:
“It was the bare minimum they could have done for me,” she spits out, suddenly looking at the fire like it’s the one responsible for her anguish, “I'm their daughter, and they just hid me away like...” She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes for a second. “Sometimes I feel like... like I’m being ungrateful. Like I should be glad they didn’t just execute me. But I know that’s not true. I know I have a right to be angry.”
“Damn right, you do,” Jinx’s voice is still gentle, but her words are immediate, and said with complete conviction, as if she’s entirely sure of them. “You’re handling it way better than most people would, blondie. If it were me, I’d have burned the whole fucking world down.”
She’s silent for a little while, but Lux finds herself unable to look at her, afraid of what she might see in those bright pink eyes; she’s sure it would be sympathy – not pity, Jinx would never pity her, she’s sure of that – and she’s not certain she could handle that right now.
After what feels like longer than it probably was, Jinx adds:
“Now that I think of it, I guess that’s sorta what I did, huh?”
Her voice echoes Lux’s in bitterness, and that makes the mage finally muster up the courage to look at her. She’s now staring at the fire, a distant look in her eyes, that same one Lux had seen before in other similarly vulnerable situations, and, not for the first time, it makes her wonder what unpleasant parts of her past Jinx must be remembering.
Although, to be honest, Lux doesn’t really want to know.
“Sorry, this isn’t really about me,” Jinx’s voice breaks her out of her reverie, its owner turning to look at Lux again somewhat abruptly, though the smile on her face is kind. “You can keep talking about it if you need to, Lux. I’m all ears.”
“Thank you,” Lux’s voice is quiet, and she feels a knot in her throat, not unlike the other times she tried to talk about her imprisonment, looking at the flames one more time, “but I don’t really want to think about that place right now.”
“Understandable.” Jinx’s voice is casual, maybe a little too casual, as if she’s trying to relieve some of the weight the conversation has taken on. “What d’you wanna talk about, instead?”
Lux considers her question for a moment.
“Can we talk about you?”
Jinx seems a bit surprised, almost startled, by the question.
“Me?” Her voice is somewhat confused, but not defensive. “What about me do you wanna talk about?”
“I don’t know, just... anything, I guess? I just... you’re a really interesting person. Even before I was imprisoned, I never really met anyone like you.”
“That’s just because you Demacians don’t know how to have fun.” Jinx’s voice is still casual and light-hearted, but this time, it feels entirely sincere, as opposed to her forced tone a minute earlier. “I hope that’s not a polite way of saying ‘you’re weird as fuck, Jinx.’”
“That’s not- I didn’t-!” Lux stammers, blushing, but Jinx cuts her off with a chuckle.
“Relax, blondie, I know what you meant.” The smile on her face is genuine, relaxed. “And I also know I am weird as fuck, but Vi says the best people are. But, anyway, what do you wanna know about me?”
Lux pauses. She hadn’t really considered that.
“I... I don’t know. Maybe... what do you like to do in your free time?”
“All I have is ‘free time.’” Jinx leans back on her hands, still sitting on the ground with her legs crossed. “To be honest, I think one of the reasons Cait sends me so much money all the time is to keep me from stealing shit. I don’t normally target people who don’t deserve it, but you know, when you’re in probation, I guess it doesn’t really matter whether you robbed the little old lady who lives down the street or some asshole dirty politician misusing the city funds. Especially when you’re, you know,” she lightly knocks against the side of her head with her knuckles.
“You were totally willing to steal some clothes for me.”
“Semantics,” Jinx waves a hand. “That’s how that word’s supposed to be used, right? Anyway, I usually just do whatever I feel like doing. I like to blow up stuff, but, well. It’s not very... nice. And I’ve been trying to be. Nice, I mean. For Vi and Cait, especially. So I make fireworks instead. Not as fun an explosion as my Super-Mega-Missile-of-Death, but oh well, you work with what you have. I’d rather not hurt people too.” She pauses, furrows her brow. “Unless they’re jackasses. Then I’m totally fine with hurting them.”
Lux decides not to ask about the Super-Mega-Missile-of-Death.
Jinx furrows her brow further, as if thinking hard about something.
“What else? Um, I like to explore. I guess being locked in Stillwater made me appreciate being able to go wherever I please, whenever I please. It’s why I climbed your tower, yeah? Other than that, you already know I like to invent stuff. I’m usually tinkering with something or another.”
Lux remembers all the devices Jinx left out to dry in the sun.
“Those devices you pulled out of your bag earlier,” she says, “what are they?”
Jinx’s face lights up immediately, and she empties the contents of one of her side bags on the ground between them.
“Lots of stuff!” She picks out one of them, the very first one she showed Lux back at the tower, holds it out for Lux to take. “You’ve seen this one, it’s a flashlight. I gave you the one that makes noise earlier, so there’s that too.” Lux remembers the device still safely nestled in her pocket, where she had put it when Jinx came back with the firewood. The latter picks out several more devices from the pile, showcasing them one by one. “This is a smoke bomb. The way things normally go for me, I end up using them a lot. This one’s a bottlecap bomb, and these are frag grenades, emergencies only. I try not to use them. I promised Vi I’d try not to let anger get the best of me again.”
“Have you ever had to use them?”
Jinx makes a face.
“A couple of times. Some people want me really dead. Can’t really pull any punches when someone’s trying to blow your head off.”
The mental image makes Lux grimace.
“Anyway,” Jinx carries on, picking up the thing she had used to light the fire earlier; now that Lux can see it clearly, it resembles an extremely small pistol, with a cap on the end of the barrell, “this is a lighter. Not much more to it. It’s useful for when I need a fire. Goes well with the fireworks, too.”
“Are any of these fireworks?”
“Nah,” Jinx empties out another of her side bags, this time the contents falling out resembling arrow-like cylinders on sticks with a long fuse at the tail-end, each one a different color, ranging from bright pink to electric blue that matches Jinx’s hair, “I keep them in a different bag.” Her face lights up even more. “Hey, maybe you could enhance them with your magic, Sunshine!” Before Lux can answer, she furrows her brows again. “Wait, no, bad idea. Low profile. Should probably shelf that one.”
“I mean, I’d be willing to try it,” Lux says, somewhat timidly. “As soon as we’re out of Demacia, I mean.”
She only realizes what she's said once the words are out of her mouth.
Jinx stares at her in surprise, her mouth slightly agape.
“I... what?”
For the first time since Lux has met her, she seems at a loss for words.
“I- I mean, it’s...” Lux stammers, not quite knowing how to explain whatever had just gone through her head and made her say that. “I mean, if we get out of Demacia. If I- we, if we want to.” Lux clears her throat, looking down in embarassment.
“Hey, Lux,” Jinx says after a while, her voice tentative, “you know that I can get you out of here if you want to, right?”
For a moment, Lux forgets how to breathe. If the prospect of getting out of that tower had been scary, the idea of leaving Demacia is downright petrifying. She had never really considered that when she escaped with Jinx, but, thinking of it now, had there been any other option for her after she left that prison, really? She’d never be able to return to that tower now, not after her parents find out that she’s gone.
(There’s one outcome other than leaving Demacia, actually, but Lux prefers not to think about it.)
Still, Demacia has been her whole life, all the she’s ever known; what little she knows of the outside world, she knows through Garen’s letters, and what little Jinx has been able to show her so far. If she had to guess, she’d say that what little had been going through her head when she escaped this morning had involved seeking refuge somewhere in Demacia, far from the capital, and under a different name, as a different person.
Suddenly, thoughts of leaving somewhere else flood her mind; somewhere she could be free, be herself, without having to worry about hiding something that’s as much part of her as the blood running in her veins, without having to wonder if today is the day she gets found out, hanged, beheaded, or maybe even worse.
Just as sudden, the idea of Jinx taking Lux to meet Piltover and Zaun flashes into her head, and Lux realizes that she might want to see the rest of the world, after all.
For now, though, the idea is still a bit too overwhelming.
“I... don’t know?” She says, still not looking at Jinx, her voice low. “I’m not really sure what I want yet, to tell you the truth.” She takes a deep breath, blows a strand of blonde hair out of her face. “For now, I’m just glad to be out of that place.”
Jinx says nothing in return, still looking at her with that same puzzling expression, as if she’s somehow staring into Lux’s very soul, trying to decipher her thoughts, cautious.
“Well, if you want to,” she says, “just say the word. When I say I can get you out of here, I mean it. I’d make sure your parents wouldn’t bother you, too. All I’d need to do is send Cait a letter.”
“It’s okay, really,” Lux finally raises her head to look back at Jinx, finding her unnaturally bright eyes, and sending her a small, sincere smile, “But thank you.”
“No need to thank me, blondie. I said we’d go wherever you wanted, didn’t I?”
“You did.” Lux lets out a yawn before she can stop herself, and, as soon as it happens, the fatigue of the day hits her like a ton of bricks; she abruptly realizes that being locked in what amounted to a handful of small rooms for eighteen years hasn’t really prepared her for outrunning and fighting bounty hunters, or jumping off tall places, grappling hook or no grappling hook. “Sorry, guess I’m more tired than I thought.”
“What did I tell you about apologizing?” Jinx playfully, lightly, punches her shoulder, her voice carrying no hardness in it whatsoever.
“Right, no apologizing unless I’ve done something wrong.”
“Yup.” Jinx sits back against the tree, crossing her stretched legs. “Go to sleep, Lux. You should get some rest, we still have a lot of walking to do tomorrow. I’ll keep an eye out for trouble, don’t worry.”
“Aren’t you going to sleep?” The question is almost automatic before Lux remembers what Jinx told her about Shimmer. “Right, never mind. I forgot, sorry.”
Jinx raises an eyebrow at her.
“Sor- uh, I mean... good night,” Lux quickly lies down on her back, opens her bag, grabs Sir Hugs-a-Lot and her dagger from inside, then places the bag under her head like a makeshift pillow and puts the dagger under it, hoping she won’t need to use it. As soon as she arranges herself, hugging Sir Hugs-a-Lot tightly, she feels sleep creep up on her.
“G’night, blondie.”
Lux hears it right before she closes her eyes, the faint crackling of the fire the very last thing she hears before sleep claims her.
*****
Lux wakes the next day feeling like a stampede of an impressive variety of farm animals has ran her over.
As soon as she moves, she feels her neck scream in protest, and she’s pretty sure she's felt three different parts of her back crack; her body hurts in places whose existence she wasn’t even aware of before now, and she feels a pebble she hadn’t noticed during the night dig into her lower back, just pointy enough to be a nuisance.
She lets out an involuntary groan when she sits up, turning her head to look at Jinx, only to be met with the sight of a fire pit whose flames have long since gone out, and a clearing which looks much less menacing in the gentle early morning sunlight; her companion is nowhere in sight.
She’s about to call out for her, feeling the panic slowly but surely begin to creep up on her, when a form abruptly lands on the ground next to her with a loud thud, crouching to lessen the impact.
“G’morning!” Jinx says, excitedly, from beside her.
Lux’s immediate reaction is to let out a startled yelp and fall back down from her sitting position.
“Oh, fuck, sorry-“ Jinx hurries to check on her, her face and voice instantly regretful, kneeling down next to the mage and stretching a hand to help her up, “Sorry, Lux, I didn’t mean to scare you!”
“It’s okay,” Lux’s reply is a bit breathless as she takes a second to recover, “you just caught me by surprise, is all.” Lux closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. “But I’d appreciate it if you gave me a heads-up the next time you decided to jump down from a tree, especially if you plan on landing right next to me.”
“Will do,” Jinx helps her up, still sounding apologetic, “sorry, seriously.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Lux smiles at her once she’s sitting up, the other girl still kneeling by her side. “Really, it was just a little startle. Have you been up there long?”
“Climbed up a little after you fell asleep. Figured I’d have a better view from up there. Plus, the fire was a bit too hot for me.”
Lux suddenly remembers how Jinx had climbed several trees the previous day, right after she and Lux left the tower.
“You seem pretty good at it,” she says, “climbing trees, I mean. You made it look so easy yesterday.”
Lux dares say the smirk on Jinx’s face is outright smug.
“I can climb most things. But, really, it’s just because I had a great teacher. I fucking sucked at it when I was a kid.”
Lux snorts in disbelief.
“No, seriously, I struggled with stuff everyone else in my group had an easy time with. You should see Vi doing this shit, she looks like a freakin’ monkey or something.”
“Was it her who taught you?”
“Pretty much, yeah. But also,” Jinx points at her own violet eyes, their uncanny glow having faded in the light of day, “I’m technically totally cheating, so I don’t think it really counts.”
“Of course it counts! I couldn’t do that even with my magic.”
“I could teach you, if you want.”
As tempting as the idea sounds, Lux takes one look at the branch Jinx seems to have jumped down from, remembers how tired she got from all the running and fighting yesterday, and decides she’d rather focus on learning how to fight, for now.
“I might take you up on that later,” she says, finding it somewhat difficult to tear her eyes away from the tree branch above her, “but for now, I think I wanna perfect my fighting skills.”
“Sure thing,” Jinx sits down beside her, “let me know whenever you want to learn how to fall from really high places!” She cuts herself off, grimaces. “I just made that sound way worse than it is.”
Lux can’t help but giggle. It earns her a pleasantly surprised look from Jinx, and she thinks she sees a faint hint of red tinge her cheeks.
They have breakfast quickly, from the food Lux has brought from the tower, and, soon enough, they’re back on their feet, making their way through the trees, after having made sure to do away with any and all signs of their presence in the clearing.
She isn’t sure how long they spent walking in the forest, occasionally making small talk to fill the silence, but the sun is significantly higher when they walk out of the trees and reach a cobblestone path leading to a small wooden bridge which crosses over a relatively wide river, connecting the shore they’re on to the edge of a small town.
Lux’s heart skips a beat when she looks at it. Immediately in front of the bridge is a wide square, surrounded by stands of merchants selling everything from fruits and vegetables to baked pies, embroideries and artisanal goods. There are several colorful little flags decorating the houses around it, as well as strings of them crossing the square itself, and people, old and young, seemingly of all backgrounds not unlike those in the tavern, are happily walking around, visiting the stands and buying things from them, excitedly talking to each other, or dancing to the music Lux can hear coming from somewhere further ahead. Most of them are dressed in vibrantly colorful clothes not that different, in shades, from the ones Jinx is wearing.
She doesn’t think she’s ever felt as happy as these people look.
“Here we are,” Jinx says, leaning sideways against one of the trees, eyeing Lux expectantly. The mage takes a while to find her words.
“Can we really go in there?” She asks, trying not to let the almost desperate amount of hope show in her voice.
“I walked through there yesterday,” Jinx replies, “and no one paid me any mind. I guess my clothes don’t stand out as much if almost everyone else is dressed like a rainbow. And you don’t look out of place at all, so it should be fine as long as you don’t use magic.”
Jinx just stares at her waiting for a reaction, clearly willing to let her take the first step.
Lux takes a deep, shaky breath, and walks towards the bridge, feeling Jinx following close behind.
She can’t stop the smile from splitting her face once she gets to the square, the music now louder. A couple of children run past them, laughing, chasing after a large, goofy-looking dog happily wagging its tail. She spots an elderly couple to the right fondly looking at a younger little kid who’s playing by himself with a yoyo, thoroughly entertained by it. From all sides, she hears merchants speak loudly to passersby, advertising their wares; she notices one stand in particular further in the back, which seems relatively crowded, its vendor, a short man dressed in clothes which indicate he is not from Demacia, demonstrating some sort of technological device that makes colorful light tricks.
(This seems to catch Jinx’s eye as well, because Lux can swear she glances his way and mutters “amateurs” under her breath.)
True to Jinx’s word, not a single person in the square seems to notice their presence. Word on Lux's disappearance must not have gotten out yet, and the people here seem to be having too much fun to care about Jinx, who, in any other place in Demacia – even in the tavern, as they unfortunately found out the previous day – would stand out like a sore thumb. They’re not even staring at Pow-Pow and Fishbones in suspicion.
The atmosphere of this place is almost infectious, and Lux’s smile impossibly grows.
“So, where d’you wanna go first?” Jinx has to slightly raise her voice to be heard above the music and the chatter of the crowd.
Lux ponders for a minute.
“We should probably see about those clothes,” she replies, scanning the buildings surrounding the square until she notices one with a wooden sign hanging next to the door, depicting a carving of a needle and thread. “That seems to be a clothier, over there.”
“You first,” Jinx motions with her hand towards the building in question, looking around somewhat uneasily, but trying not to let it show.
When they manage to cut a way through the crowd, they walk through the door to find themselves in a small room, illuminated by the open windows on the walls; along them, are several mannequins adorned in all manners of clothing, most of them as colorful as the garments the people in the square are wearing.
The person behind the counter, a short, tired-looking man with a round face and a little pair of glasses to match, immediately perks up when he notices the two women walking into his store.
“Oh, customers!” He says, the tired expression evaporating from his face. “Welcome, welcome! What can I do for you, miss?”
Lux doesn’t fail to notice this last part seems to be directed exclusively at her.
“Um...” Lux struggles to find the right words; she’s never really had to buy anything before.
Thankfully, Jinx seems to notice her distress, and instantly comes to her rescue:
“We need clothes.”
It’s blunt, very different from the tone she usually uses with Lux. Still, the mage gets the impression she’s not doing it on purpose, but rather because she’s feeling extremely uncomfortable with this situation.
The man looks at Jinx from head to toe, needing to crank back his head to look her in the eye, and raises an eyebrow in suspicion.
The girl, apparently used to this, simply sighs with impatience and reaches into one of her side bags; the man slightly jumps in surprise, no doubt thinking he’s about to be robbed, when she pulls out a large bag of coins not unlike the one she had used in the tavern, and carelessly throws it on the counter.
The owner’s eyes immediately go wider than Lux would have thought possible when he looks at the bag, some gold coins spilling out of it and scattering on the wooden counter, and his posture changes in a split-second:
“Why, yes, miss, of course, anything you need!” He scampers from behind the counter, picking up something from under it, and approaches them with a thin, yellow measurement tape. “You’ve come to the right place! Sy’s my name and clothes are my game!”
Sy fails to notice Jinx cringing in reaction to his words, but Lux doesn’t.
He takes both their measurements in what feels like around fifteen minutes, Jinx looking uncomfortable the entire time, and watching him closely with a particularly cutting look in her eyes when he measures Lux, then claps his hands together excitedly.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure I’ll have something that fits both of you!” He says. “I assume you want colorful clothes for the festival, yes?”
“Whatever you have is fine,” Jinx grumbles, her expression almost comically grumpy as she stares at a piece on one of the mannequins like she’s more interested in it than Lux knows she actually is.
“Actually, I’d prefer something white, if you don’t mind,” Lux speaks up when he begins to leave to the backroom. He turns around, surprised.
“Sure thing, miss,” he says, failing to mask his bewilderment at her request, but he soon composes himself. “I’ll be back in but a second!”
As soon as Lux and Jinx pick out outfits, none of them too different from what they’re currently wearing, Sy hands them the clothes, Lux carefully folding hers and placing them in her bag while Jinx just picks hers up, bundles them up and roughly shoves them into her side bag, Sy making a slight face at her carelessness. They both turn to leave, before Lux remembers something, and addresses Sy once again:
“Actually sir, there’s one more thing. You wouldn’t happen to know where we could get some clothes washed, would you?”
“Oh, why, of course!” He seems visibly relieved not to have to deal with Jinx directly, this time; it hasn’t escaped Lux’s notice that the taller woman had been eyeing him with a sharp glare the entire time, and she could tell he was getting nervous. “Just four stores down to the right, there is a laundry place. It’s right behind the stand of a gentleman who sells fruits, you can’t miss it!”
“Thank you,” Lux replies, and hurries off after Jinx, who wasted no time in walking out the door as soon as Lux had said those words.
“Slimy bastard,” Jinx mumbles, when they’re back outside.
“Do you have to deal with this kind of attitude a lot?” Lux asks, remembering the way Sy had scrutinized Jinx before she threw the coin bag on the counter.
Jinx scoffs.
“It’s what I deal with the most, followed only by people who want to make me stop breathing.”
Lux doesn’t really know how to respond to that, so she says nothing.
When they leave Jinx’s clothes to be washed and left off to dry, Jinx once again uncomfortable with being in a small place surrounded by strangers, even though the owners seem much nicer than Sy, the taller girl asks to stop at the post office.
“Need to send Vi a letter,” is all she says, and Lux waits as she writes on a piece of parchment on the post office counter, and asks the attendant to dispatch it to Piltover. She bites back the urge to ask Jinx what the letter is about.
It must be around noon when they’re once again back at the square, and Lux sees that the people have now formed a dance circle in the middle of it, with several people clapping in rhythm with the music around the dancers. She gasps.
“Jinx, look!” She points toward the circle, the people splitting off in pairs, then switching them up and dancing with someone else, with more people occasionally joining in. “It’ll take a while for our clothes to get done; why don’t we dance with them in the meantime?”
Jinx scratches the back of her head.
“I don’t know, blondie, I’ve never been much of a dancer. Cait taught me how, but.”
“Oh,” Lux says, deflating a little, but the smile on her face still genuine, “that’s okay, we can do something else! I’m sure I saw a florist booth somewhere to the left.”
Jinx, however, seems to have noticed the disappointment in Lux’s face, no matter how brief, and studies her with that familiar blank expression before extending a hand to her:
“Come on.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s go dance, then.”
“Oh,” Lux immediately shakes her head, “no, really, Jinx, it’s fine, you don’t have to-“
“Lux, really,” her voice is gentle despite her having to raise it to be heard over the music and the voices of the people around them, “I noticed how happy you got when you saw them, your whole face lit up. I ain’t about to take that from you.”
Lux stares at her for a couple of seconds.
“Are you sure you’re fine with it?”
“Wouldn’t be offering if I wasn’t.”
Lux keeps looking a her for a short while more, before taking Jinx’s outstretched hand in hers.
The taller girl leads them to the dance circle, and Lux immediately loses track of time when they join in; all she knows is that she gets paired with several more people when they switch – a boy with spiky brown hair, an older lady with gentle blue eyes, a big brawny man with a long beard and a kind, happy smile on his face – but it’s impossible to miss the fact that, once the music ends abruptly, it’s Jinx she’s paired up with, her hand on the Zaunite’s shoulder, the other one held in hers. The people around them start clapping and cheering loudly as soon as the music stops, but neither of the two are really paying attention, breathing heavily from the physical exertion, unable to look away from each other’s eyes. Lux is suddenly extremely aware of how very close they are to each other, and, by impulse, she lets go, pulls back a little, clearing her throat. Jinx almost mirrors her down to every action, but she also scratches the back of her head in an awkward manner, looking at the floor, her face as red as a tomato; Lux imagines her own cheeks mustn’t be a different color right now.
“Um,” Lux says, feeling shy for some reason she can’t make out, “that was fun!”
“Yeah,” Jinx seems somehow even shyer than her, still unable to look up from the floor. It’s so unlike her usual personality, it’s almost bizarre.
“Thanks, Jinx,” Lux says, feeling her heartbeat gradually slow back down to a normal rate. When the other still doesn’t look up, Lux tentatively reaches out and gently places her hand over Jinx’s, “Really, I mean it. You didn’t have to do that for me. Thank you.”
This gets Jinx to look up at her, and when their eyes connect once more, Lux can almost feel a sudden surge run down her spine, as if the gaze they exchanged was electrically charged. For a second, Lux thinks Jinx’s eyes glow like they did during the night.
Lux lets go of her again, and, once more clears her throat.
“I don’t think the clothes are ready yet,” she says, wondering if her voice sounds as hysterically nervous to Jinx as it does to her, “so, where to now?”
They spend the rest of the afternoon browsing stands, Jinx quickly buying the things that catch Lux’s eye though the latter doesn’t once ask for them, even one of the light-trick devices from that stand they’d noticed earlier, despite Jinx audibly and visibly scoffing at the craftsmanship, much to the indignation of the vendor. Jinx mysteriously disappears for a couple of minutes when they overhear someone mention fireworks at the end of the afternoon, but she quickly shows up next to Lux again, like she usually does, almost like a ghost from one of the books Lux would read at her tower.
Once the sun begins to set, they go back to the laundry place and pick up Jinx's clothes, which she roughly shoves into her side bag like she did with the outfit they bought earlier. When they step back outside, most of the people seem to have converged to the river shore, awaiting the firework display.
Jinx gently pulls her to the side, lowers her voice conspiratorially:
“Hey, so, uh...” She pauses, that familiar wicked glint shining in the back of her eyes, which glow increasingly brighter the darker it gets. “I was thinking, since you’ve never seen fireworks before, we could stay and watch just for a while. The guards don’t seem to be looking for you yet, and, since I can see in the dark, and don’t need to sleep, I can carry you tonight, so you can get some rest while we stay on the move.” She pauses again, looking strangely nervous. “But only if you agree to it,” she adds.
The image of Jinx carrying her in her arms bridal-style through the forest crashes into her mind and makes her face burn hot.
“Um- sure!” She says, diverting her gaze to the floor just like she did after the dance. Jinx immediately lights up, childlike glee all over her face.
“Awesome!” When Lux starts to walk towards the crowd, Jinx stops her with a gentle hand:
“Um, actually, I was wondering if we could hang further back. I’m not a huge fan of crowds.”
Lux had actually noticed, judging by how tense and on edge Jinx seemed to be the whole time they were in town, no matter how hard she tried to hide it, seemingly for Lux’s sake.
(That detail gets added to the list of things that happened in the last two days that made Lux’s heart grow several times bigger.)
“Sure, no problem.” Lux decides not to mention that she noticed how Jinx had just spent the whole afternoon among crowds just to make Lux happy, recalling how uncomfortable she seemed to get when Lux thanked her earlier for dancing with her.
(She feels like her expression must have given it away, though.)
She knows it was the right call when she sees relief wash all over Jinx’s face.
“Cool, thanks,” she says and Lux follows her to a more secluded area, away from the big crowd that’s gathered near the river shore.
A few minutes later, when the sun is almost entirely gone, the first firework shoots up into the sky, exploding into a circle of red sparks that light up the town below with a loud boom that has Lux jumping; she’s heard the faint sounds from her tower before, and she knew what they were from, but to hear it in person, to be able to see the burst of colors that accompanies it, is something else entirely.
Lux feels an uncontrollable smile take over her face as she watches firework after firework explode in the sky, painting it with several different colors for a brief couple of seconds each, when a particularly big one, one that looks starkly different from the others even before blowing up, cuts through the evening sky and shatters, with a much louder kaboom, into the vibrant pink figure of a monkey with pointy teeth, soon followed by another one that explodes to form the word “POW!” in bright blue right next to it. The crowd imediately starts cheering, and Lux stares at them until they disappear completely, only then turning to face Jinx with a dumbstruck grin:
“Did you do this?”
Jinx has her arms crossed, and a smirk on her face that’s undoubtedly smug.
“Two of my fireworks might or might not have ended up mixed in with the others,” she shrugs, her violet eyes glowing in the evening dark. “No clue how that happened, though.”
Lux just snorts in disbelief, still staring at her with a huge smile on her lips.
“Hey, I just figured your first firework show should be special,” Jinx raises her hands faux-defensively. “Plus, someone had to show these guys what a real firework looks like.”
“What did you make them with?” Lux finds herself asking, despite herself, feeling a bit like a curious, naive kid again.
The smile that takes over Jinx’s expression is strangely bittersweet, and seems to carry a certain weight Lux can’t begin to figure out.
“Just powder,” she says, and the look in her eyes matches her smile to a T.
Seeing that vulnerable look on her face, Lux can’t stop herself from saying, feeling as if the words are coming from the bottom of her very heart:
“Thank you, Jinx.”
Jinx simply turns to look at her with more fondness than Lux has ever seen in her eyes, and, in that single second, the mage’s heart seems to momentarily stop.
She doesn’t know why, what it means, or what part of her it is, but as soon as she locks eyes with glowing violet ones, she registers the reaction from somewhere in the back of her mind:
‘Fuck.’