AN: I'm pleasantly surprised to see the positive feedback regarding this story. I wasn't expecting such, given that this pairing is, well, very unorthodox.
Your words and thoughts are always valued. Thank you for your support.
~ Wings
The last week had been tortuously slow. There was not much difference with her previous days, except for one.
She was haunted.
The thoughts of that fateful meeting with the shadowy reaper was always in her mind, when she was eating her meals, when she was reading her books, when she was painting on her canvas, even when she was walking in the gardens. She just couldn't get him out of her mind for some reason.
She partly knew the reason. Despite everything, she was still a very curious person. And something like that… It had hooked onto her curiosity. Another reason was, out of everything that had happened to her over the course of the last year or more, that conversation with him felt more real than anything else. She was suffocating, for days, weeks, months. And that meeting with him was like the first fresh breath of air. The first time she could feel undiluted emotions, other than emptiness.
She had caught herself numerous times sketching him. She hadn't gotten a very good look at him due to the darkness, and yet, she was speculating on how he looked. She had only gathered certain features about him, like his mismatched eyes, his messy hair, his narrow yet defined jawline. A crooked smile, arched eyebrows, straight nose. The slightest hint of exotic. A hint of familiarity.
Lux paused and looked down at the sketch of his face in her notebook. His smile looked positively devilish, like a sociopath. Something that should have been downright uncomfortable to look at. But, for some reason, she found a curious kind of liking to it. It was a smile of masks, just like hers. She could tell. She knew.
She sighed, and went back about her day.
Nighttime approached, and a question was being thrown around within the confines of her mind. As the sun set, the question raised in volume in her head. As the night progressed, it had become a tug, a magnetic pull.
She wanted to go back to that spot, her little spot, where she had once believed to be hers alone but now had been exposed. To him.
She was hoping she would run into him again, although every instinct inside of her told her it was absolutely foolish. The man was an assassin, and would gladly kill her. By some miracle, she had gotten lucky and he hadn't killed her that night. She could not fathom the reasons on why he didn't.
But was she really lucky?
Hadn't she been contemplating killing herself that very night?
Hadn't she been hoping he would kill her? To take that choice out of her hands, to make it easier for her?
Was she still hoping for that?
Midnight had come, the day had flown her by. That had been happening a lot lately. It was the same routine for Lux, and hardly anything mattered at all. Life was passing her by while she wasted away here, like a flower without sunshine.
She gritted her teeth, and made the decision.
… … …
She was better dressed this time, wearing a simple white dress that barely brushed her knees as she followed her familiar trail through the forest. A sleeping garment, by all accounts, but at least this was made of thicker cotton and was somewhat modest.
A sharp stab of pain had her hissing as she jumped, raising her right foot. She leaned against a tree as she looked down at her foot, caressing the hurt area on the underside of her foot, feeling the slick blood on the small cut. Maybe coming barefoot through the forest wasn't the best idea, but she loved it too much, the feeling of soil and grass under her feet.
She put her foot gingerly back down on the ground, keeping the injured area off the soil as she half-limped the rest of the way to the clearing.
The moon was high in the air by the time she had reached it, illuminating the area moderately in a silvery glow. It was only a half-moon tonight, and yet its light shone strongly into the area.
The spring in the middle of the clearing had a sheen to it, looking almost ethereal with the refractions of moonlight dancing upon its surface.
Now that Lux was here, she realized one crucial thing. She had come here hoping to run into that man, Kayn, again. However, he was an assassin, who had come to Demacia to assassinate someone. That was why she had met him a few nights ago. Why would he ever show up here again for no reason? The chances of him coming back here was, logically, next to none.
That thought put a damper on Lux's mood, not that her mood was already anything positive. She walked to the spring, feeling extremely stupid at herself for forgetting that. She had come running like a blind fool without even stopping to think.
She gingerly made her way over to the side of the spring, over to where she knew was a very flat rock that was perfect for sitting. Finding it, she set herself down onto it, twisting around and dipping her legs into the water. The rock was quite low, so her legs were submerged almost to her knees.
She breathed a sigh of relief as the slight stinging of her wound was cooled by the water, replaced by a blessed feeling of relief. She sat like that for a while, just staring down at the water, moving her legs in the water absentmindedly. What was she thinking, coming here hoping she would run into him? For such an intelligent person, she could really be naive, thinking that life was something like a fairy tale, that he would show up on the same day she did when she needed him.
She didn't realize she was crying until the tear had already crossed down the length of her face and fallen off, landing on her knee. And after that, the sobs started. Quiet sobs, the sounds of someone utterly defeated and broken. She was stupid. A taste of something real and she chased it like a fool running after a dream.
That was the thing about dreams. If you ran after them, they would fade into smoke, like all dreams. And she, like some daydreaming schoolgirl, had run after hers at the first sign of something different.
The night was quiet, the silence only disturbed by her soft crying. She didn't even bother rubbing the tears away, since they didn't show any sign of stopping. She felt too weak to even raise her hand to accomplish the motion. She just sat there, her arms wrapped around her midriff, head bowed and eyes shut tightly as she sobbed.
Even then, even with all the sadness and self-hatred for being so foolish, a naive part of her hoped.
Hoped with all her heart, that he would show up. Just like in the stories.
Hoped that he would show up now when she needed him the most. The shadowy assassin who was a complete stranger to her, and yet gave her what she needed a few nights ago. And now she needed it again, like an addict reaching for his poison.
But he didn't show up.
Her crying stopped after half an hour, and she sat there for two more hours. Until she felt the chill of the water finally getting to her, her feet completely numb, shivers breaking upon her pale skin. Only then, she finally relented, bringing her feet out of the water. She tried standing up, but her legs were shaky, numb from having soaked in the cooling water for so long, and she fell after a couple of steps.
She smelled the grass and dirt as she lied there on the ground, her fingers weakly gripping the grass as fresh tears began to roll down her face once more. She lay there for another few minutes, mentally picking up all the shattered pieces of herself while waiting for feeling to return to her legs, before she got back up onto her feet and began to walk back home.
She knew this was bound to happen. The chances of her meeting him again were almost none. Completely none.
And yet, it hurt to have her truths be proven, like it would hurt anyone to have their dreams vanish.
It hurt a lot.