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I haven’t slept.
I don’t, really.
But as the night air tickles my cheeks and catches in my hood, snaking around the back of my neck and the shorn bristles of hair – I’m still not used to it – I’ll never be used to it – maybe I’d closed my eyes just a bit.
So what.
I try not to wake her when I jerk back awake in scribbles and scratches of teeth and faces.
I’m not back there. I’m not. I’m not back there watching Vi’s screaming face, growing smaller and smaller as I fall away from her forever.
I’m not back there seeing the hollow mindless rage in Vander’s eyes where there used to be our Dad.
I’m not back there seeing the hollow empty space in Silco’s eyes as his smile softens away.
I’m not there seeing the light take Isha from me.
I’m on a skyship. The air is cold and cruel and clean, cleaner than the Pilties’ air, cleaner than any air I’ve ever tasted, it cuts into me like a knife, freshly sharpened. It cuts my rot away.
I’m on a skyship, I’m sitting on the little viewing bench tucked away on the forward vista deck. We were watching the sunset, but it’s long gone now. There’s only the stars and the bottomless dark of the sea and a pale glimmer of the eye of the moon, watching us.
There’s a girl next to me. I feel her. I hear her breathing. I smell her. She’s asleep, peaceful, safe next to me, and I don’t know why.
I don’t know who she is.
My eyes keep drifting to her face. It’s small and heart shaped, but has those high sorts of cheeks people call ‘patrician’ – whatever, maybe she’s rich, but she doesn’t smell Piltie – and a little button of a nose that upturns just slightly at the tip.
Her lips are pink and soft and expressive, painting smart and warm and interesting and interested all over her face when she talks to you, and her teeth, when she smiles, are clean and dazzlingly white. People don’t have teeth like that in the undercity. The water’s bad and we eat weird stuff. Wherever she’s from, there must be like, actual nutrition or whatever.
Her eyes, when they’re open, are bright, bright blue, the bluest I’ve ever seen, and there are a lot of blue-eyed people in the old town. I used to be one, too. But mine were blue like the sea before I became a monster, and hers are blue like the sky, bright, like all of her is.
Her skin is clean and warm and healthy. She looks healthy, like nobody really does where I’m from. Even the biggest, toughest people in the Undercity look sick. Everyone’s sick, from the air and the water, except the Pilties, but they look soft and smell fake with their fancy perfumes, and she…
She doesn’t smell fake.
I can smell a person’s sweat across a crowded room. My nose got that good after the Shimmer, like my eyes and ears, it’s overwhelming sometimes, I have to drown it out with the scent of bombs and gunsmoke and fire. Lot of people stink. Fear, mostly, or want, or weakness. In the Undercity, most folks have the Gray leaking through their every pore.
This girl? Her smell is clean and bright like everything about her. She smells like someone who grew up beneath white fluffy clouds and brilliant blue skies, like the Pilties, but even they have a kind of rusty smell from all the industry, all the metal surrounding them, and they love their fancy fragrances, but this girl smells like somewhere…different…in ways I don’t even understand.
I think of the picture books. Places with green fields instead of green tangles of Chemtech pipes. Big spiky mountains, with white tops on them, instead of soaring Piltie towers. Maybe even flowers, real ones.
Maybe even trees. More than one tree in a big ol’ hollowed out silo.
She smells like all of those things, but most of all, she smells like sunlight.
Why is she here?
She hasn’t let go of my hand.
Who is she?
I don’t get it. How this pretty doll-faced girl who smells like sunlight just walked up to me and asked me about – about Isha – and I – me, Jinx – I just caved, just like that.
I should have snapped and snarled and twisted her words and hurt her, because that’s what a Jinx does, but…
But I left that Jinx behind. I let her die on the floor of the Last Drop.
Who am I now?
And nobody, not Vi or stupid Caitlyn, talked to me about Isha. Ekko I can forgive; he didn't even know she existed, but…
She just looked at me and asked…
Nobody let me talk about her. I didn’t even get the chance to tell Sevika what happened to her.
I sat in a jail cell and waited to die. Their eyes watched me with hate, so much hate, but mostly pity.
Even Caitlyn.
Even Vi.
The bright girl breathes in and out, her head warm against my shoulder, through her hood and my cloak.
Nobody talked to me about Isha. Even the ones who watched her burn up in the light.
And this total stranger just…asked.
I don’t remember when she fell asleep like that. We were just talking, blabbing on about all kinds of stupid things. They just spilled out of me, in a big chaotic jumble, no particular rhyme or reason, no particular order. The games Isha liked to play. The songs she’d get me to sing to her when she went to sleep. The scratches she left on things. Her imagination, crazy, like mine. Her sharp little teeth – ah she was a biter, my kiddo – a real scrapper – she’d take on anyone –
And that…that was when my stupid tear ducts started acting up again, so Blondie told me this stupid longwinded story about her brother, who is apparently some kind of soldier, and a big deal in this Demacia place where she’s from, and a big lughead, though I suggested the word ‘dingus’, which made Lux laugh, the best, ugliest laugh I’ve ever heard, totally nothing you’d ever expect to come out of her pretty-perfect face, like an electrocuted whump, or an asthmatic alley cat bouncing down a staircase –
Lux.
Her name is Lux.
Blondie. Sunbeam. Flashlight. Lux.
I’m getting a new nickname every time I look at her and they all stand for Lux.
And I get the feeling she doesn’t laugh like that around the people she walks among. She doesn’t get to. There’s something guarded about her. Masks she wears, for them. Her face kinda freezes whenever she puts one on, on instinct, it’s probably real hard for most people to notice, but not for me.
She starts looking just beautiful, in that marble, untouchable, Piltie statue sort of way. She might still be smiling, but her eyes aren’t. She’s about as warm and real as something carved on a colonnade when she does that…
And she doesn’t seem to be able to hold it up around me. I can watch it crack and crumble in real time, because I see her face soften and her lips part a little and the warm and soft and bright starts spilling out of her and then there’s a little flicker of fear.
I’m breaking her. The fake her, anyway. And it’s scaring her.
But she hasn’t gone away.
I look at her hand in mine.
A … friend?
An actual friend?
I haven’t had one in a long time.
Sevika probably counts, but she was more of a grumpy auntie. I miss her, though. I’d never freaking tell her, are you crazy? But I do. And Isha…Isha was my goblin, my skrunkly bean, my sister, my kiddo…
A friend, though? Not since Ekko. And the last time I saw him…yeah, he talked me out of a dark place. He gave me his jacket. He gave me his kindness. We goofed around war-painting each other, and just for a moment it was like old times, just us, Little-Man and Pow-Pow.
He even helped me try to do something with my hair…
So, yeah, he was kind to me, supportive, my Little Man, my best friend, and he helped me realize what I needed to do, to make Jinx something new, step up, change my story…and for a moment, maybe, I even thought-
But the whole time we talked, he kept looking at me with this…sad faraway look in his eyes and…
…and then he talked about Powder.
About a me that was somewhere – maybe somewhen – else, someone who wasn’t broken like me, someone who was whole - that’s not how he put it but I knew, I knew - and there was something so painful and raw and warm in his eyes when he talked about her. The me that wasn’t me.
And I saw it like I saw it on the bridge. He missed her, loved her. The me that wasn’t me.
But not me.
No, no, that isn't fair to him - he saw the good me. He saw her in me - but - but...
I still can’t see her. And I can’t be her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
I thought you could love me, the way you used to, even though I’m different.
Ekko couldn’t, not really, even if he’d wanted to. And Vi couldn’t, either. They were trying, so hard, to put all that water under the bridge. But that’s not so easy for me. That water’s full of blood, you know. Blood, and dead Firelights, and dead family. Maybe they can let that go, but I don’t know if I can.
They loved a girl who never was. She fell down a well a long time ago.
Isha never knew Powder. Isha only knew Jinx and loved her anyway.
Loved me.
I look again at the girl leaning against me.
She’s going to go. One way or another…
She doesn’t know what ‘Jinx’ means. She doesn’t know you’re fire and death. She doesn’t know you destroy everything you touch. She doesn’t know what you did to the home you had to leave behind, and the people who tried to love you.
She doesn’t know Jinx.
But she doesn’t know Powder, either.
“I…” I lick my lips and whisper, to the night, to myself, “I’m Jinx…and Jinx can mean…what I want it to now…anything I want it to…”
“Mm…?”
There’s a small, adorable sleepy noise humming at her lips, and blue suns rise in her face – oh, they’re just her eyes – she’s so close to me I can feel the warmth on her cheeks.
There’s that fear again, a sudden thrill of panic and embarrassment as she realizes she fell asleep on me.
But she’s not just flustered like some Piltie girl might be. At the ‘impropriety’ or whatever.
It’s gone too quickly. It vanishes behind her statue face, only it’s not made of marble, it’s made of steel.
No, no, she’s genuinely scared. And I know that fear.
Because she let her guard down.
“Well,” she says, clearing her throat, “It got dark very fast, didn’t it?”
“Night,” I pointed out, with a roll of my eyes and a thrust of my finger to the sky, “It does that, Blondie.”
She cracks into a little bubble of that hideous laugh again, and shakes her head at herself, at me, in amazement.
“Wow, I suppose that wasn’t my most profound observation, was it?” Lux says, fighting back piggish snortles that are utterly impossible coming out of that face, “Or the most, you know…” a sly wink, “…stellar?”
I stare at her, unblinking, and wonder if that was actually meant to be a joke.
“Sorry,” Lux giggles again, “If you thought that pun was bad, you should hear me talk about rainbows – um! I m-meant to say I-…”
She looks at our hands and her eyes widen a little.
But she doesn’t let go. She softens her grip, just a little, maybe to let me know it’s okay. For me to let go. If I want to.
But I don’t.
“D’you have to go, Blondie?” I ask her, my voice cracked a little, like my throat’s dry.
I imagine her saying yes. I imagine this being just a chance encounter. A novelty. A random conversation with an intriguing stranger, and then she goes back to her life, whatever that is. I’ve only had little hints of it, but she sounds important. Important people like her have family, friends. Maybe even a…lover, partner, or whatever. Someone to curl up with at night.
Someone who’ll touch her and kiss her and keep her warm, like no-one ever has for me.
The thought hits my guts with a familiar twist of ugly jealousy and I feel like I’ve been socked in the ol’ gizzard, because what?
Since when have I ever cared about that? I haven’t felt like this since I watched that navy-haired Piltie Enforcer scrag pawing at my sister for the first time, only this time it hits real different.
I don’t…think about people like that.
A Jinx part of me I’ve been trying very hard to put to sleep since I killed myself is wide awake, all of a sudden, and it wants to find whoever gets to put their hands on Blondie, and kill ‘em, and-
“No,” she shakes her head, “But…It is getting a little cold.”
It takes all the fire out of me and puts my murder voices back in my skullbox.
“Oh,” I say, so eloquently.
She smiles, a smaller, wistful kind of smile that bobs away from her lips quickly and laughs at herself, a little, before turning to look out at the sky, her hood hiding her cheeks and eyes from me.
Then she slides her hand from mine, and I catch myself, like an idiot, chasing it with my fingers, reaching after her for a split second before I realize what I’m doing and curl them into my palm.
They’re warm, even the metal one, but without her they’re getting cold again…
Lux stands, brushing off her cloak, and turns back to me.
“Maybe we should go inside?” Lux says brightly, “Where it’s warm? Get something to eat, or a hot drink. Do you like tea, or cocoa, maybe? Well, we could…and …”
It’s hard to tell with the colorless light of the moon, but there might just be pink on her cheeks.
“…and we could talk more,” she concludes, “Where it’s comfortable.”
“Yeah…cool,” I’m on fire with the witticisms. Peak Jinx. Genius inventor, chaos bringer extraordinaire, terror of the twin cities, “I…wanna.”
My eyes search hers. Pink and blue. I wonder what she makes of them. I wonder what she makes of me. What she’d think of me if she knew what I’d been, what I’d left behind…
I wonder why she’s still here.
“I, um…” says Lux. Quite the pinnacle of erudition herself, I see, “Was curious about what you’re up to. A-after we reach Demacia, I mean.”
There’s a weird catch in my throat, and when I try to speak again it kinda comes out as a hem-hem kinda cough.
I roll a tattooed shrug.
“Don’t know,” I give her, “Just…had to get away.”
“From Piltover,” Lux nods, her brow growing troubled, “I understand.”
“No,” I say, instantly, regretting it, but unable to stop myself, “You don’t.”
I expect a pushback, maybe a fight, but instead she sighs.
“No, you’re right, I don’t,” she admits, “I didn’t really expect to walk into a Noxian invasion on my first diplomatic mission to Piltover. Let alone whatever was going on with those …”
She furrows her brows.
“…hollow people.”
“You saw all that?”
Lux smirks, and it’s an expression I don’t expect from her, and there’s something in her eyes – a glint of light.
“You’re not the only one who had to fight your way out of that, Jinx.”
My heart starts thudding. My Shimmie-blood stirs and wakes up.
I see more than she wants me to see. I see something in her eyes she’s concealing from the whole world.
Oh.
Oh, she’s not just a pretty little creature who’s just enough of a contradiction to be interesting.
She’s a lot more than that. She’s like me.
She’s dangerous.
“So you do know who I am.”
Her wicked smile grows a little deadpan.
“What,” she says, oh-so-innocently, “Do you think I spent my whole time in Piltover hiding in a hotel room eating baked goods and reading the famous Piltie morning papers?”
A bright laugh cracks her.
“Even if I had, you were on all the front pages.”
I meet her smirk with mine.
My smirk has teeth.
“Yeah. That’s me. Jinx,” it’s a grin, now, all knives, challenging her, “The Loose Cannon, Terror of Piltover, Ghost of Zaun. Whatcha gonna do about it…Sunbeam?”
“Ask you, very nicely,” says Lux, “What your intentions are in my country?”
A snort rips through me and I throw my head back and laugh. A bad, sharp, ugly, Jinx laugh.
Fuck.
I don’t fucking swear. Silco taught me better than that. Don’t soil your language, Jinx. Words are weapons. Erudition is a reflection of self-control and purpose. We do not waste our words on meaningless filth.
But I need to, right now. Because, laughing like that, I am Jinx again, the Jinx who is strong and scary and unstoppable, and I fucking missed her.
“Weeell,” I roll my blazing eyes, “I’m probably not gonna blow it up. Gonna try not to. Kinda trying to be done with all that, y’know.”
I take a step toward her, another, close the distance with her. I see her nostrils flare; I like getting in people’s personal bubbles, scaring the hell out of them. I’m close enough to give her the texture of my skin, the glint of my eyes, the tickle of my breath, my scent.
“But I can’t make any promises. Stuff just blows up around me, whether I want it to or not. Jinx stands for Jinx.”
I haven’t had a shower since Ekko let me get cleaned up at the Firelight base and we got dolled up for the ‘final battle’. And then we…had a final battle, so I probably stink like fire and blood and death and tears, not that she minded when we were curled up together there, for whatever crazy reason.
“Hm,” Lux says, under her breath, unperturbed by my proximity, blue eyes narrowing to sky-lit slivers, “It’s funny. I should be intimidated by that, but – I shall let you in on a little secret, shall I?”
She steps closer to me, until we’re almost nose to nose. I’m shorter, but not by much, and now we’re sizing each other up, she looks ‘slender’ and ‘petite’ in that pretty girl way, but she’s got a kind of Demacian solidness underneath it that tells me she can probably take a punch.
“I’m pretty good at that myself,” she murmurs, and she doesn’t even blink, and her eyes are made of ice and steel.
“Are you?” I tease, my voice a sandpaper rasp.
“I think you’d find just how…illuminating,” she says, without skipping a beat or blinking.
And I believe her.
But she doesn’t know how much she makes me want, with every fiber of my being, to see it for myself.
“I ask again; what do you intend to do in Demacia?”
I don’t break eye contact, but I do scoff under my breath and roll another easy shrug.
“I don’t know, Blondie. I killed a ton of people, blew up the Piltie council; killed some gangsters, tried to make my sister kill me, gassed the Pilties with their own poison, started a revolution, found a kiddo, lost a kiddo, started a frickin’ war with some Noxious stabby-granny I didn’t even know, found my dad, he was a wolfman, lost my dad, twice…only he was my second dad because the Pilties shot my first one and I shot my third one…”
I shrug at her slowly widening eyes, her slowly parting lips, her slowly furrowing brows.
Confused as heck, and it somehow makes her prettier.
“…killed myself a whole bunch, still here, somehow,” another bitter laugh, “Such a Jinx, I jinxed myself too, can’t even die right. Oh, my best friend’s a time traveler and he’s in love with another me, only she’s not damaged goods like this me, so that’s cool, I guess? And my sister’s screwing the Piltie bigshot Commander-”
“…Caitlyn Kiramman?” Lux blinks.
“Yeah, Tophat, Cupcake, lemon-lips, bitch-titties, her,” I scowl, “You gonna let me finish my story?”
“S-sorry,” Lux swallows, “Do go on.”
“…my stupid sister isn’t trying to smash my skull to paste with her big Fat Hands anymore, but I killed myself the last time so she could finally just be rid of me…”
I was trying to be flippant. Caustic. Turn my pain into laughter. Jinx.
But there’s a heat on my cheeks and it’s not the nice kind, it’s wet and tastes like salt and Shimmer and I hate it.
“…so yeah, Demacia seems real far away, Sunbeam.”
I stare at my feet, because her eyes are wide, and she’s looking into me, and I’ve smashed all her defenses to ruin, and her sincerity is blinding, like staring at the sun…
“Haven’t thought past that. Maybe I’ll build some new weapons and see who needs dead. People pay for that, right, when you’re good at it? Girl’s gotta eat.”
“Mercenary work does exist, yes,” Lux sighs, “But you’d find yourself hunted in Demacia, very quickly, if you took up arms in defiance of our laws. I’ll be blunt with you, Jinx, I think you would find the Dauntless Vanguard far more formidable and relentless a foe than the Piltover Enforcers.”
“Pff,” I laugh in her face and pull away, strolling across the deck, my old energy springing back into my gangly limbs, “I’m not scared of a bunch of tin soldiers, Blondie. You guys don’t even have guns.”
She smiles thinly, patiently.
“The warriors of Demacia have held back every tide from our borders for centuries, Jinx. Every man or woman of the Vanguard is a storied hero unto their own. We have bested the Noxian Trifarix Legion on their own terms, and driven them from our lands, we have stemmed the Winter’s Claw invaders from the north, we have banished hags and demons from our forests and slain dragons in their lairs – or in the skies above…”
I don’t like the glint of pride in her eyes, or the way she says we.
But it confirms my suspicion. She really is dangerous.
But not because of what she’s saying.
“But yes, the Enforcers do have guns,” she finishes, with a very smug little smile that makes me want to smack it right off her pretty pink lips.
Or do something else to them, the thought nearly knocks me on my butt, because what?
“…oh, just wait till you see mine,” I grin at her, “Those pig-ticklers ain’t got nothin’ on Jinx.”
It’s going to require some work to rebuild them. I picked scraps out of the Hexgate vents, but I still got the schematics for my combo gun in my head. Fishbones and Pow-Pow might be piles of junk in a tote bag stashed in a dark corner of the cargo hold, but they’re with me, and Zapper is right there at my hip, under my cloak.
All I need is a decent workshop to lair up in and a little bit of time, and Jinx could be back in action.
If I…still want her to be.
Lux considers me, studies me like a deadly snake, but … not one she wants to behead.
“Would you consider a compromise?”
I sputter another caustic bubble of a laugh.
“Do I look like someone who does anythin’ halfway?”
She smiles, implacable as a mountain, and clasps her little hands behind her back.
“Hmm, fair point,” Lux tips her head in a flick of blonde hair, coiling from her hood, “How about, rather, a deal?”
My brow twitches. Now she has my attention.
I’m still Undercity, to my bones, and the undercity runs on deals.
“Spit it.”
“I somehow doubt you’ve thought about lodgings,” she hums, “And you shall find Demacia quite unlike the world you’ve left behind, Jinx. Don’t let the clean air and tidy roads lull you into safe.”
She studies me up and down.
“No tangled warrens of the Undercity to hide in. No scrap heaps to forage for supplies. No fellow brilliant inventors to barter with for components. You’ll be alone with the elements, the wind, the rain, the fields, the forests, and the road. Have you ever slept in a forest, Jinx of Zaun? Have you ever fought off a hungry pack of wolves, or a territorial bear? Have you even thought about what you’ll eat, how you’ll keep warm in a bitter Demacian night?”
Her eyes aren’t cold, but they aren’t kind, either. They aren’t softening this for me, and I appreciate that, as much as it rankles me to be thought of as helpless.
I lick my lips and furrow my brows.
“Blondie, you don’t even have any scars on your face,” I growl, “You have no idea what I’ve survived.”
“No, I don’t,” she replies, unphased, “But all that you have survived has been, though far from lesser, very different. Have you even hunted a rabbit for your supper?”
She flicks a glance to the gun at my side.
“…you generally have to kill it with something that’ll leave enough behind to eat.”
A small choking sound in the back of my throat is my only concession.
“Fine. What, then?”
“I’m the governor of a small settlement,” she begins, and I boggle at her, “An…unusual one. But one, I think, you would not approach with the prejudices I can’t seem to shake from so many of my countrymen.”
“You’re a – a what?”
“It’s a long story,” she smiles sweetly, oh so sweetly, that smile is sugar and roses and I can’t stop looking at it, “Suffice to say, the people I’m protecting aren’t welcome in the rest of Demacia. We have assurances of peace from the King, but…things have been tense. And we’ve been …attacked… before.”
“Heh, sounds familiar.”
“I suspected it would, Jinx,” she says, “I think you’d understand, more than most Demacians, what it means to be hated for something you never asked to be.”
She steps closer to me, and spits on her hand – the Zaunite way.
It’s such a left field move from her, she must have studied our culture, she must know, I’m momentarily stunned to silence.
“Come with me to Terbisia. I’ll give you lodgings, food, and employment. We’re a peaceful community, I’ll warn, maybe not your style. But you might be pleasantly surprised at what we can do.”
My eyebrow arches. I’m staring at the wet patch on her palm.
“What’s my end?”
“My people aren’t fighters, and I can’t protect them alone. Someone with no skin in Demacia’s politics and prejudices, a warrior, a rebel, a hero, whose name alone inspires revolution and makes tyrants quake? You might be just what we need.”
I’m reaching for her hand before I know what I’m doing.
A growl licks my throat.
“I’m no hero, Blondie.”
She smirks again and tilts her head.
She’s reaching behind her, but it’s not a weapon she pulls from her travel-satchel, despite the tension in my spine and the twitch of my fingers.
It’s a rustling, cylindrical bundle.
“That’s not what the front pages say.”
She unfurls a Piltie newspaper; with “JINX JOINS FIGHT FOR PILTOVER! INVADERS DEFEATED!” and “A TRAGIC REDEMPTION FOR OUR CITY’S VILEST VILLAIN?” sprawling across the headlines.
There’s a cold lump in my chest.
They’re making a memorial.
For me.
Zaun’s making one too; my little bluebirds, adding me back-to-back with Vander, and that cuts me, but there’s one Topside in the front page image and it’s breaking my freaking brain.
The Piltie Council is there – the ones I didn’t kill and a bunch of even snobbier looking newbies – and freaking Sevika is with them, and I almost laugh.
That’s gotta be the ogre’s idea. One last jab at me from beyond the grave. Smug bitch. Grumpy-pants not-auntie. I hate her so much, I even made her a cool crab arm about it.
She’s still wearing the cool arm, with my graffiti all over it…
The lump is in my throat now.
I miss her so much.
“You screw with me,” I say, my throat dry, “You lie to me, you trick me, you try to use me, I’ll kill you.”
“If I do any of those things,” she replies, “I’ll deserve it.”
I curl a dark-lipped smile, spit, and clap my hand to hers. Our spit squishes together, and I’m fighting a really stupid blush in favor of a grim, baddass smirk.
“Deal.”
The stupid, stupid thought comes to my head – that I’m disappointed, for some reason, that this is how we’re swapping spit –
Shut up! I scream at my head, and my eyes focus, and the sunlight girl is smiling at me.
“Deal,” she says, squeezes my hand with a surprisingly firm grip, and tilts her head, “Now, on to the next order of business…”
“Wh-what?” I stammer, caught offguard, “What now?”
Her brow arches, mischief twinkling in blue eyes.
“Cocoa?”