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Noxians are renowned for their ability to lie and cheat their way through life. It’s their trade – everyone who is christened as a Noxian spits out lies and they don’t eat away at the truth because they spin their webs so tightly that everything connects back to one another. Living in Noxus, whether or not you’re native, grants insight to the game of lying. Lying through words, lying through actions, creating an endless chain that stretches as far as the eye can see – the metal can’t be broken, but it’s only ever used when there’s something that’s needed. Direly.
Strength is prevalent in all forms – cowardice does not lie in the eye of falsehood. A well-spun lie can be praised while a faulty truth is condemned.
Demacia’s pride swells from nothing but the truth. Anything less is considered a filthy disgrace. But Demacians are far more forgiving – they give second chances. They play by the three-strikes-you’re-out system, one that Lux knows well. She’s witnessed men and women alike be thrown into grimy dungeons, barred away from the light. She’s observed as mercy was offered to those that had placed shame upon the Demacian name, with a loose promise to “never do it again.”
Every time she hears that it’s like nails against a chalkboard. It stirs something within her, causes some gears inside to sputter and jump-start, roaring to life and jerking back and forth only to warrant emptiness and a dull throbbing pain that gets louder and louder in her ears like rushing water. Quicker it goes, but she knows that it’s unintentional. She didn’t mean to leer in and listen. She didn’t mean to overhear the mistakes of her homeland brethren. But it happens sometimes, and she feels everything inside of her tug.
Piltover, however, doesn’t give a damn whether or not you lie. The law contains all of the weight. If one denies the law, there aren’t any second chances – there’s simply punishment in accordance to the gravity of the crime. Where Ezreal comes from, he’s accustomed to edging near breaking the law. Being friends with Caitlyn and Vi had its perks, even if they kept an eye on him half the time. They were wary of the treks he made. If they were out of the bounds of Piltover, they didn’t matter – they had no way of plastering him with the rewritten copy of the law, telling him to come to their office immediately or whatever the hell it said. He’d never paid attention to those summons anyway, always let off with a warning since he’s doing it “for the betterment of the citystate.”
Pff.
So when Lux and Ezreal meet, they collide head-on – they clash in a series of frustrations and bitterness, and sometimes they coalesce and maintain each other. All three of the citystates have altered their psyches in one way or another. Noxus taught them how to evade persecution because of their near flawless lies. Demacia taught them how to appreciate the truth – and how to find it in everyone, because they always had their ways of pulling it from people. And Piltover taught them never to go against authority, but enjoyment can always be found in skirting around them and having a little bit of fun.
Lux is too tightly knit to Demacia’s arrowhead. Garen doesn’t keep a close eye on her anymore because she’s a woman of the world. In school, she had managed to make so many lies to cover up absences or why she hasn’t completed certain tasks that it eventually became a giant snowball. One after the other occurred and eventually she began to believe her lies so strictly that she followed them to a point, searing them into her mind, carefully piecing together a plastic smile because there were no other emotions beyond that. Emptiness, self-hatred, refusal to accept the truth – whatever had become of it was long gone.
After lying for so long, it’s so easy to fall into a rollercoaster trend. Up and down, up and down – the swing of emotions constantly flowing until there’s a need for support.
So she pulls another one from the confines of her darkened heart – she yanks another pretty little lie from underneath it all and spills it to him. Lux plays pretend for a while – there are tears, there are a few sniffles and maybe she is fake, maybe she is nothing more than a doll fashioned by war and battle, and maybe Ezreal doesn’t buy every single thing that she’s saying but he can understand it because he’s been there. He’s hit rock bottom before. He knows what it’s like to lack confidence, to lack emotion, to be so unfeeling and empty that all that’s left is this big, wide open space and you could pop at any second from all of the pressure building up within.
It goes without saying that the royal dons a crooked crown, and her supposed ‘knight’ does his best to realign it, even if it’s illusionary.
Pitiful goes the tale, but Lux wouldn’t have her own show go any other way.