Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“So how exactly does this little uhhh do-hickey? Portal-wortal machine work?” Lux’s brow furrows as she pokes the squishy blue button.

“Ya’ Know? I’m still kind of figuring that part out.” Jinx starts to laugh, “All I really know is it brings us places, sometimes I can kind of input a general idea? But sometimes it does its own thing.” Jinx grabs the device back and starts spinning it on her pointer finger before catching it.

“Then how did you know you were going to arrive at my room?”

“Uhhhh well… I didn’t? I saw a neat room before jumping in and just went for it!”

“You’re lucky you didn't end up in the guarison, I don’t think Garen would be as understanding about mystery portals showing up as I am.” Lux puts her hand over her mouth and lets out a quiet giggle.

“I’m sure I would’ve figured something out!” Jinx wanders around the room picking up a book by the corner, letting the pages unfurl. She squints her eyes, trying to understand the symbols written inside, but none of it looks even remotely familiar.

“Did the portal mess up my eyes, or is this nonsense?” She flips through some of the pages before Lux walks up.

Lux pops her head over the edge of the book. “Oh, you found one of the forbidden books! It’s filled with super old spells from the before times when magic was still openly studied. Demacia would like to pretend they were all burned, but I tried to keep as many as I could.”

She points to one of the symbols, “See that one, I’m pretty sure it means ‘and’ and this one I think it means ‘add’ I’m… ummm… still deciphering” Lux twists the top of her shoe in place nervously.

“So… You pretty much have no idea how to read it either.” Jinx laughs.

“Well! Well… No. Not really… even that is just my best guess at this point” Lux scratches her temple softly, “It’s a lot harder than you’d think guessing a language by just looking at old books, and everyone that used to be able to read this is either really and I mean extremely good at hiding or well… dead”

“Then… you have no magic?” Jinx lifts one of her eyebrows.

Lux conjures a small ball of light in her hand and lets it dance from finger to the next, “I wouldn’t say that.” Lux restores a bit of her pride with this bit of light.

Jinx’s eyes widen, and she stomps her feet and shakes her two fists in excitement. Then approaches Lux’s small bit of magic, “Holy crap, this might be even cooler than the portal machine! How’d you learn to do that?”

Lux's ball of light goes to the palm of her hand as she extinguishes it by closing her fist. She turns her head to the side as she explains “When I was born I lit up the room with this extreme light as I let out my first cries, it shattered all the windows and revurberarted across the room” Lux looks down, “My parents were terrified, my mom held me in her arms and caressed me she was crying herself, and I started to laugh, the light faded into a small ball until finally I was calm and it left.”

“Whoa, so you were basically this cool from the start?” Jinx clasps her hands around Lux’s.

“It definitely was not considered cool… Everyone in that room, besides my parents, was executed; no one could know of the secret child of light. To the public, I was deemed a miscarriage and hidden from my kingdom. The only people who know about me are my parents and my brother. Even the guards who drop off my food have no idea who is inside. It took a long time for me to have the control I do, and even still, if I don’t keep myself happy, it can still take control over me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be allowed to just… I don’t know… To just wander.. To be free to go where I like and not be worried about my magic slipping out. I think I’m close to being able to just… Live normally like everyone else does.”

“Fuck that!” Jinx yells, Lux stumbles back, “Stupid princess locked in a tower shit, we’re going to go wherever the fuck we feel like, and you’re gonna use that light inside you as much as you want!” “Can’t feel good to keep everything inside… Hiding from everyone, that isolation, I-I know how shit that can feel. And I refuse to do it ever again! And I am not letting you do that either!”

“And where are we supposed to go? There’s not exactly a safe place for magic in Runeterra; it’s banned everywhere! Even if we somehow get out of Demacia, there isn’t somewhere that’s safe for me.” Lux pushes her hair back through her fingers as she starts to spiral. Sparks start growing from behind her, becoming larger and larger with her words.
“And not just that! They’ll know I’m gone almost immediately, I mean, they drop off food here, they check on me, they’d come after me!” The massive ball of light has grown larger than the bookcase behind her.
“We’d be running forever!” Lux yells, and the giant ball of light shatters, and the bookcase behind them begins to fall.

Jinx grabs Lux’s waist and pulls her in tight, and the bookcase slammed directly behind Lux, pushing all the dust around it up, narrowly avoiding hitting the Lady of Luminosity.

A solid shiver up Lux’s spine is felt by Jinx’s slender fingers, and Lux begins to cry into Jinx’s chest, “See! I can’t be trusted, I could’ve killed us!”

Jinx smiles gently as she lifts Lux’s chin, “We are getting you the fuck out of here. And we’re going somewhere they’ll never find you. I don’t care how dangerous it is, we’ll just have to do it together.”
She pulls out the portal device from her pocket and jams her fist into the large blue button. It begins to tick louder and louder as a small hole becomes a massive portal.

The wind roars from the portal, ushering them into the other side with a field of clovers and smells of morning dew easing in from the portal's opening, lighting up the depressing rooms with the warm light.

“Are you with me?” Jinx opens her hand out to Lux.

Lux wipes away her tears and gulps as her throat eases from the pain of her crying. She reaches from Jinx’s hand with a soft smile starting to cross her face.

Jinx smiles wide as she grips Lux and pulls her into the other side. Jinx falls flat on the greenery with Lux landing on top of her. Lux uses her arms to lift herself into Jinx’s gaze for a moment before they both let out an uproarious laugh and Lux falls back into Jinx.

They lay together, it feels like the first time they’ve ever felt truly at ease, perhaps the most they’ve felt for their entire lives.

Chapter Text

Surrounded by greenery, the two women start to take in this new dimension.
In the distance lie the tallest trees the two of them have ever seen; spring has given abundance to this land. Budding flowers interweaved with the fresh green leaves. Small insects pollinate the flowers around them, butterflies, bees, dragonflies, and ladybugs all fly around. Most notable to Lux is the field of clovers they’ve landed themselves in. The smallest little plants amaze the mage after only seeing the outside world from such a distance; she never realised how precious the little things about the world could truly be.

Lux flops to the other side of Jinx and picks one of the thousands of clovers that surround them. She twirls the stem in her hand as she looks at the small details of the leaves.

“What are these called?” Lux asks with a twinkle in her eye,

“Clovers! Though I’ve never seen so many in one place, back home you might find a small patch if you were lucky, and if you were really, really lucky, you’d find one with four leaves.” Jinx laughs, “Although somehow if I were around, we’d never find them. Just another reason I’m a Jinx, I guess.”

“Jinx?… Is that your name?” Lux asks shyly, “With all this happening so fast, I think I completely forgot to ask.”

“Yup! That’s the name, don’t wear it out! Or do, it’s kind of cute the way you say it.”

Lux blushes while looking down at the clover, “ Well, mine is Luxanna, though everyone I know just calls me Lux.”

“And by everyone, you mean the three people who know you?” Jinx laughs a little.

“Well, there was one other person who knew me…But I don’t really know if he counts.” Lux finally sits up.

“But that doesn’t really matter now, we simply have to find one of these four-leafed clovers!” Lux perks back up and kneels as she begins squinting to find one.

Jinx wraps her arm around Lux’s shoulders, “With a patch this big, there’s no shot we can’t find at least one!”

They start searching all around, finding clovers with five, six and even seven-leafed clovers, finding plenty with two leaves. But not a single four-leafed clover to be found. They’ve been searching so long that the sun starts to set. Lux brings up a couple of orbs of light to continue searching.

After a long day of searching, the sun finally sets.

“Damn, my bad Lux, looks like we couldn’t find any.” Jinx laughs at her consistent bad luck streak, even following her to other dimensions.
Lux pushes her mouth to one side, “No, that can’t be right…” she says to herself,

Lux grabs one of her previous finds, a six-leafed clover and carefully plucks two leaves off. She turns around to show Jinx her new makeshift four-leafed clover, “See, Jinx, I knew we could…”

But when she turns around, she sees two giant women towering over Jinx. One clad is purple with a large sword and blue butterfly-like wings. Her golden hair shone in the light of Lux magic. The second had bronze armour shining, making the pink of her skirt glimmer. Her transparent dragonfly wings flutter lightly as she stares down at the two girls. Both soldiers were surrounded in a purple sphere of energy with gold lacing around them.

The one in bronze armour moves her spear down towards Jinx. “What is your purpose here?” she shouts with authority.

“Uhhhhh..” Jinx looks to the side, tries to find some sort of excuse, but her mind is drawing a blank.

Lux drops all the clovers from her hands and levitates her wand towards her hand, “We are… We are explorers!” She thinks of the blonde man who used this same excuse when he met her. “We come from afar and simply want to find new people and new places! We have a love for discovery.”

Jinx turns to Lux, surprised by her rapid excuse-making making and gives her a thumbs up and mouths “Nice.”
Lux tilts her head towards Jinx with a smile.

The two guards look them up and down and then look towards each other with a squint.

They mutter to each other briefly before returning to Jinx and Lux, “You’ll need to come with us for further questioning.”

Lux and Jinx look towards each other with a shrug. “We agree to this,” Lux lets out.
“Maybe some free food will show up,” Jinx whispers to Lux as they start walking with the two guards.

After a decent trek through the fields, the sun begins to rise again, and they finally end up at two trees that tilt towards each other, making was look like a gate in the middle of the forest. After the gate is a giant branch that leads them up into the trees. As they enter the other side, a whole new world opens up, filled with folks whose wings fly them through the kingdom of the Faeries.

Just as they start to get a hold of their bearings, the portal machine in Jinx’s pockets starts to make a variety of strange noises, getting louder and louder.

Lux looks at Jinx with wide-worried eyes, scared of what's to come, and Jinx looks back at her with a sly smile.

“Finally, the best part!” Jinx yells. The device begins to float between them and then lets out an explosion of blue shimmery dust that surrounds them.

The two of them begin to transform, wings sprouting from both of their backs, Lux’s pink and green and Jinx’s are blue and gold, with new dresses with the texture of velvet, but with the look of glass spreading across their skin. Lux’s wand sprouts flowers from either end. Jinx’s pow pow shoots off pollen into the air, fishbones grows vines all around, and wings appear on the sides with butterfly antennae near the end of the cannon.

They are suddenly back in the Faerie Kingdom, levitating off the ground for a moment before landing on their feet.

The guards aim the weapons for a moment, then see the familiar wings of their kin. And lower them.

“This is a situation for Queen Karma. I’m… unable to comprehend what just took place.” The woman with the spear says.

“I agree, Kalista, this is meant for the Queen; she’ll be able to understand this situation.” As they turn back towards their intended destination, suddenly, a majestic Fae flies in from above them. The guards kneel before her, immediately place their fists over their chest and hold their weapons upright in the other hand.

“At ease.” Her voice resonates across the land with a gentle calm. “You are dismissed,” she puts a hand on each of their shoulders as she moves towards Jinx and Lux.

“Yes, your highness.” They both stand then flutter away deeper into this hidden city in the forest.

“Your situation is unique, isn’t it?” Karma holds her hands together as she eyes each of them up and down. “I sense you are similarly confused by the circumstances as we are. There are humans and there are Faeries, never have I seen one become the other.” The three of them continue up the branch further into the Fae Kingdom.

“Well, maybe we’re just funky humans.” Jinx spits out.

“While I have no doubt you are… ‘funky,’ I’ve seen from afar that you arrived here under particular circumstances, and with outstanding abilities. Man-made light sprouted from the field, first of blue and then of white, and then again when you arrived here in our Faerie Kingdom. You seem to be holding quite special powers among you. Unlike anything I’ve seen a human conjure. Perhaps you are not quite human…”

“I think the wings prove that, don’t they?” Jinx laughs.

“We’ve been watching since you landed here. We disguised ourselves outside of our kingdom to keep an eye on the human world, and you two made quite the ruckus upon landing here. All we are wondering is how you managed to land here. We’ve never seen magic quite like yours.”

Jinx scuffs her feet, unwilling to indulge the question of the royalty. “Well, if you saw it, then you know, right? We weren’t here, and then POOF, we’re here. Isn’t that all that matters?”

Karma squints her eyes at Jinx with disapproval; she wants a clearer answer.

Lux sneaks to Jinx’s side. Pulls the vine that secures the device in place and grabs it with her hand. Flower petals fall from the sides of the device as she grasps it tightly, “It’s this that let us come here. We press a button and we travel to different universes. We’re adventurers exploring the universe together!”

A smile spreads across Karma’s face, “I see…” she puts two fingers in her mouth and lets out an ear-piercing whistle. Then, a purple and blue cord attaches the Queen to Lux. “I enjoyed your little story,” The guards begin to usher in from the sky, “But I think it’s time for your adventures to come to a close.”

“But-But they only just started”, Lux tries to use her other hand to pull the cord, but to no avail. Her hand passes through the magic.

Jinx’s eyes dart around, looking between the faeries approaching them from the skies and the royal trying to steal their device.

“You see, I have plans… Grand plans for my kingdom. And having a device like this, well, you can see how they could ruin our plans. If we allow humans this amount of power, they will spread their wickedness to every world.”

Finally, Jinx sees the cord is growing stronger, but that Lux is not bound by it quite yet. Jinx makes a nose-dive, flying herself and Lux and sliding them both off the branch of the tree, and starts flying into the air. The cord between Lux and Karma breaks, shattering into dust. And Jinx quickly grabs the device back and reattaches it to her pants.
A swarm of faeries starts following them from behind as they make their escape.

Lux lets out a small yelp as she's thrown into the air. Then her wings begin flying on their own.

“I… I didn’t… Oh… J-Jinx, I’m so sorry. I-I…” Lux is beginning to choke up.
“Save the sorries for later, let's figure out how to get away first!” Jinx pulls out her smallest gun, and a zap of lightning hits the fae behind them.

More of them start to appear directly in front of them. Jinx pulls out her gun, Pow-Pow, and sprays a heavy dose of pollen in the Faeries' faces. Before grabbing Lux’s wrist and pulling her down under the fae.

Jinx smacks her head with her palm “Think, think, think, Jinx, cmon!” Jinx swoops by a small kitchen with a water being held in the cone of a leaf, and some steamed buns hanging on the window, “Maybe food-” She stuffs one of the buns in her face and the rest in a pocket.

“Hey! You can’t just steal those!” A young man with strawberry blonde hair shakes his fist at them both before starting to follow behind.

“Is that? No, it can’t be…” Lux murmurs to herself. She squints her eyes towards him. “Ezreal?” The male faerie stops in his tracks and points towards himself and then towards Lux. Before falling behind the herd of fae passing him.

Lux’s mouth is agape as she tries to process who that fae was. She shakes her head before closing her eyes, bringing her hands together, gathering energy until she releases a beam in front of them to clear a path.

“I have an idea!” Lux puts her hand over Jinx’s and pulls her, “Through the gates, cmon Jinx!” They both veer to the right, towards the gate.

They make it through the gates, and all the Faery soldiers chasing them quickly turn back into the insects they look so similar to. Jinx and Lux also quickly lose their wings and tumble to the ground.

Jinx slams her fist against the large, blue pulsating button, “Next please!” The portal appears on the ground, and they slip through to the other side.

Karma’s hand appears through the end portal, surrounded by purple magic, and Jinx quickly slams the button again, and the portal closes, cutting off the hand of the Faerie Queen. It falls to the ground. They were safe now.

Both lay there on the ground for a minute, breathing heavily. First adventure together complete.