Yes, this is Nocturne/Lux, though perhaps not in the vein of your typical shipfic. The quality is not perfect, but I'm looking to get a feel for the community response while I work on the next chapter and do some editing. Enjoy!
Garen cringed as the battlefield on the screen was once more shrouded in darkness. He didn't have to hear the forthcoming scream to know whom the damned nightmare was targeting this time. It was the same person it always hunted. That knowledge didn't make his little sisters cry of terror hurt any less.
"Garen, railing." The sound of his childhood friend and heir to the Demacian throne's voice cut through the encroaching haze, prompting the warrior to release his grip on the decorative railing he didn't realize he'd been crushing.
"Sorry," he muttered, gaze still fixated on the scryglass the latest league match was currently displayed on. Jarvan followed his gaze, before quickly turning it back downwards.
"How can you watch it?" the crown prince asked, himself unwilling to bear the sight of somebody he knew so well subjected to the eternal nightmare's whims.
Garen thought for a moment. "It reminds me of why we're fighting," the Might of Demacia admit. "She shouldn't have to fight. I hope that one day, she won't have to." Once more, Garen's hands clenched into fists, though he was careful this time to avoid further damaging the Institute's furnishings. He closed his eyes as on-screen Nocturne casually discarded his sister's lifeless frame. "She should never have had to…"
In the depths of the jungles of Summoner's Rift, Nocturne also whispered. Holding Lux's dying frame to his eyes, the nightmare spoke a single word: "Tonighttt…" A spark of understanding flared in the light mage's eyes as the last vestiges of life left her body, and looking towards the skies, Nocturne laughed.
The dungeons of the Institute of War were a place subject to many a rumor. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that the "home" of some of the league's most mysterious and dangerous denizens be so unknown itself. That same aura of mystery however, was oft prone to attracting undo attention from those who were willing to do a little research. So it was that despite the intended secrecy of the place, most of the league's better infiltrators were quite well acquainted with the chamber halls, and in some cases, even the prisons residents. As it was, the league had given up on trying to discourage champions from entering, and relegated itself to simply kicking out anybody the guards might be lucky enough to catch with a warning and in the worst of cases, a stern lecture from a high summoner.
It was for those reasons that the latest unauthorized entry to the prison blocks went unnoticed by the two summoners currently on watch. Instead, they're attention was caught by a sudden storm of flickering light. Though it may have seemed odd to the uninitiated, given the setting, such occurrences were not particularly uncommon for the place, being a byproduct of the dungeons containment mechanism. Each cell in the area was sealed with the latest in techmaturgical manabarriers, similar to the built in defense system of the steam golem, Blitzcrank. A side effect of having the best containment system techmaturgy could devise however, was dealing with the storms of illuminate the barriers released upon suffering physical contact. So it was that whenever one of the dungeons few denizens was particularly irritable, the area appeared to suffer the makings of a major electrical storm until the offending resident gave up.
"Gods, you'd think they'd have given up by now, eh Jori?" the first summoner remarked, as the pair was bathed in the storm of flickering light. He was a lean man, with brown eyes and a short crop of auburn hair that gave him a roguish sort of look. "I mean, they must have realized they're never getting out, right?"
"There is not much else for them to do," the other summoner, Jori, replied. He was a large, bear of a man that wouldn't look out of place amongst the barbarian tribes of the Freljord, despite his Ionian heritage. "Can you truly say, Daveth, the you would not do the same were you in the same position?"
"I guess not," Daveth acquiesced. "Doesn't mean the lights aren't hard on the eyes." As the pair passed the apparent origin of the problem, Daveth sighed. "Oy, Nocturne, can you stop with the light show? I'll bring you out on the field and you can kill some people." The nightmare's red eyes briefly fixated on the summoner's own, and Daveth couldn't hold back a shiver. The lights didn't stop. "Well fuck you too then," he muttered as he and Jori continued passed the eternal nightmare's containment field.
"Speaking of Nocturne, did you see the latest match, Daveth?"
Daveth laughed. "You kidding me Jori? Who didn't see the last match? It's not everyday they make the challenger matches public."
"I suppose it maybe was an unnecessary question," Jori admit.
"There's no maybe to it, Jori," Daveth chuckled. "You gotta feel bad for Lux though, having Nocturne constantly at her throat." He closed his eyes, shivering slightly at the thought. "What do you think Jori?" The summoner opened his eyes, turning slightly in expectation of his fellow summoner's response. Jori replied with a scream. Daveth spun around, only to see his companion held in the air before him, a wicked serrated blade protruding from his chest.
"Oh no," Daveth whispered, stumbling backwards as darkness encompassed the room.
"I don't know how Jori," the blade's bearer hissed, tossing the body to the side, "but I would feel much worse for you." The blade raised, and Daveth closed his eyes.
Lux started blankly at the two bodies on the flo or. They belonged to two fairly low ranking summoners if her memory served her correctly. "Did you kill them?" she asked her companion. There weren't any markings on the bodies, but then, she didn't think there had been on any of his other victims either.
"They believe themselves dead, but they'll wake… eventually."
Lux turned, slightly surprised. "You let them live? That's unlike you."
"They are no longer my enemy. Their deaths are… not currently required."
Lux simply nodded. She had decided long ago that she wouldn't delve into her partners reasoning, other than what he himself told her. He understood her in a way no one else could - she didn't need to know precisely why. "Let's go then. Hop in and we'll get out of here." Her companion nodded, and Lux watched as his corporeal form began to fade into something less tangible.
"Are you sure?" Anybody else would not have detected the note of concern in the entity's rasp. A few months back, she wouldn't have either. "We can still force our way out."
Lux shook her head. "I don't want us to fight through my friends and family. Nocturne… I trust you."
For a single, drawn out moment, their eyes locked, and the nightmare seemed to gaze straight into her soul. Then finally, his faded form began to drift forwards. "Embrace the darkness," the nightmare whispered, before finally, Nocturne's form faded completely. For a moment, there was only silence. Then the light mage screamed.
So yeah, I'm looking to have this around 30k words, possibly longer. Expect the next chapter hopefully soon, and I really hope some of you guys can provide some feed back on what you'd like to see, what you wouldn't like, and what you think of what's here.
Also, thanks goes to Supreme Distraction for talking through some of this stuff with me and for providing entertaining conversation during the writing process. If you have any love of shipping whatsoever, you should check her work out.