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The nightmares came too often.
For Lux, she was the only thing between a horrific monster and Hoshi City. The last bastion. As she fought, she felt herself getting weaker, her armor cracking and disintegrating into particles of light, revealing civilian clothes beneath. Slower, sloppier, her attacks missing more often than they hit. She often looked around for her team mates, but they were nowhere to be found. How had she ever done this alone?
And then, just before waking, she'd feel the presence of the First Star; her time was up. Her time as a Guardian had ended. It took away everything it had once given her, and she was left gazing into the maw of the void. Into the maw of the end.
For Jinx, she was coming down from a mission, Shiro and Kuro chittering and chirping happily around her as she came down from the adrenaline high. And then she felt it; the call of the First Star. The call was melancholy, distant. Her familairs' faces began to contort, twisting inward, as their bodies still hopped around and squeaked without a care. Blissfully unaware of what was happening to them.
And then she felt it in her core. Her magic was being ripped from her being. And it was leaving gaping holes in it's wake. She'd spent all of these years finally having a purpose, a reason, and it was being taken from her. She desperately clawed at herself, trying to find a way to keep even a shred of her power with her. She couldn't go back to who she'd been. But the First Star didn't care; this new life had never belonged to her. It had been on loan. And now it was time to give it back.
This wasn't how it had happened to either of them.
Dreams rarely care what happens in reality.
Jinx shook herself out of sleep, digging fingernails into her palms so the pain would keep her awake. She cursed silently, then rolled over to snuggle her girlfriend. To her grasping arm's surprise, Lux wasn't there.
Well, fuck. She peeled the covers off of her and groggily tugged on a night shirt, then shuffled down the stairs. Lux sat at the kitchen table, looking through an old photo album, a cup of tea steaming on the table. Jinx pulled out the chair next to Lux and sat down.
"You too, huh?" She mumbled, trying to talk around her sleepiness. Lux nodded and stood, wordlessly moving over to the stove. She poured a second cup of hot water and dropped a teabag into it, then set the mug down on the table. Jinx had been thrashing in her sleep when she'd woken up; waking her only made the nightmare return sooner. So she'd just made extra tea water for when her partner woke up.
They didn't speak for a while. Lux let Jinx wake fully - Jinx looked over the photo album in silence with Lux. It had been three years since their powers had faded into oblivion, and they'd stopped hearing the call of the First Star. And yet still...
"It's bullshit," Jinx muttered.
"Yes." Lux took a sip of her drink and scanned the page. Lulu had been the one to suggest making an album of their time together. It had become a ritual that, if she couldn't get back to sleep, she'd come down, make tea, and look over the memories they'd made. She turned the page, coming to the candid of Poppy and Jinx at the state fair. Their backs to the camera, Poppy had just rung the bell on the test of strength, and Jinx was mid-jump in celebration. It was one of the few recorded moments of the two of them getting along. It also never failed to make Lux smile.
"Is it that dumb pic of Short-Stack and me?" Jinx demanded, watching the corners of Lux's mouth twitch upward.
"Mmhm."
"I hate that picture." Jinx didn't really.
"I know." And Lux knew that, too.
"We should get the gang back together sometime," Jinx mused. "Even Janna."
"That's a nice thought." It was also improbable. Their powers faded shortly after graduation, and Lulu and Poppy had gone back to Bandle City. Though they stayed active in the group chat, they were rarely seen. Janna, who had wanted to retire as a Star Guardian since she'd started mentoring them all, had become illusive and nearly impossible to reach.
Lux's finger traced the edge of another photograph; a chain of Syndra, Sarah, and Ahri braiding one another's hair at a picnic. Shortly after Ahri's old teammates, who had been thought dead, had been discovered, Lux had heard much less from the other team. Once in a while Sarah or Ezreal would check in. Ezreal tried to play cool about the whole thing, but Sarah was always tense when discussing Star Guardian-related activities. Something had happened to their team, something she didn't think it wise to talk about.
They hadn't seen any of the girls since graduation. Lux saw Ezreal occasionally, but they never spoke of the past.
"It's bullshit," Jinx repeated, sleepiness replaced by conviction.
"Yes," Lux replied wearily.
"No, not just 'yes', babe. This isn't just a 'yes' situation. I was chosen. Chosen! I gave up my way of life--"
"Jinx..."
"--to fight for this world, and as soon as it wasn't continent anymore, First Star ditched us." She stood, pacing, restless energy building in her blood.
"I don't think..." Lux swallowed. A thought had plagued her recently, one she didn't like to entertain. Still, it bubbled to her lips. "I don't think First Star had a lot of experience with surviving Guardians."
Jinx whirled to face the other woman, her face twisted in anger. Hurt. "So because we didn't die, First Star didn't know what to do with us? We would have been better off beefing it so First Star didn't have to deal with us?"
Lux twisted her hands on the table, her expression grim. "I don't know." She'd hoped not, but now that Jinx was saying it out loud, it made sense. It was probably a lot less mess and less work for the girls to die and have their powers reborn to new Guardians than it was to reach their "expiration date" as magical girls.
Jinx kicked over her chair with a yell, making Lux jump. "It's all bullshit!"
"I understand, but I think you need to calm down." Lux tried to swallow the lump forming in her throat. The more she thought about the situation, the more tears threatened her eyes. Jinx's anger echoed her own, one that she'd shoved into a dark corner of her mind and tried not to think about.
"Don't tell me to calm down!" A fire blazed in Jinx's eyes. "First Star took everything from me, Lux! I can't go back to my old life like you could! Even if I could, I don't want it anymore! I'm not who I was when I was chosen. The life I lead back then has nothing for who I am now. I'm nothing anymore, Lux!"
Lux stood with such force that she knocked her own chair backwards behind her. "Do you think you're the only one who lost something? We all lost things, Jinx!" Her hands balled into fists. "We all thought we were special, because we were chosen. I lost the first thing that made sense in my life. I lost my closest friends. I lost the feeling that I was doing something worth doing."
"You had somewhere to go back to, a life, a family to go home to!" Jinx retorted, raising her voice.
Lux's tone matched the other woman's. "How do you go back to civilian life after everything we've seen? Everything I've seen? I had to do so, so much, alone, before the rest of you arrived. If you think I was able to just live a happy life as a regular girl in my parent's house, you're wrong. I had to leave, because I couldn't be who they thought I was anymore. I couldn't stand it!"
Here came the tears, hot, angry, mournful for the life she'd lost. Both lives, actually; the life as Luxana Crowngaurd, a normal girl, and as Star Guardian Lux.
A memory clicked in place in Jinx's mind. Their first apartment together, cheap as hell, the two of them barely scraping by. Lux's phone ringing in the dead of night, a call from "Knife Girl," and Lux getting up to get it. Asking the caller questions about her brother. Pictures of her family suspiciously absent from any frame in the house.
But her anger continued to boil in her stomach.
"So little miss perfect couldn't fit back into her old life. Newsflash: I didn't fit into any life before First Star found me! I finally had direction, for once in my life, and that was ripped from me, too! You know the kind of person I was before. Do you really think I could go back to being the villain after having played hero for so many years? The world didn't need, or even want me, until I started saving it. And now it probably doesn't need me anymore!"
Jinx wasn't a crier, but confronting this fact out loud put a pit in her stomach and a sting in her eyes. A world that she'd laughed at in order to find some comfort, that she'd destroyed in order to create her place. Why would it want her, now that she was useless? Nothing of value had been lost.
Lux was across the kitchen in three long strides, and for one crazy moment, Jinx thought maybe she was going to hit her. But instead, she just placed her hands on her shoulders.
"Dumbass." Lux choked out, tears spilling down her cheeks. "I need you."
That was the final straw; Jinx's floodgates burst. She fell into Lux's arms, wrapping her in a desperate embrace. "I need you. I've-- we've lost so much. I can't lose you, too."
"I can't--" Lux swallowed, unable to continue for the lump in her throat.
The two of them sunk to the floor, arms around one another, tears and somber "I love you"s gently carrying on as the sun yawned over the horizon.