fake smiles

Even though Lux finally was able to fall asleep, she wasn't granted the dreamless, empty darkness she yearned, instead she found herself on a small island, a patch of ground in the middle of an unnatural black ocean. High waves crashed against the beach and the roaring sound of the sea grinding against the sand filled her ears.
Lux could watch the water raise higher by the minute, every wave tearing away more sand, if the blackness that filled everything but her tiny island could even be called water. She wanted to scream for help, but no one would hear her over the deafening wind, even if there had been anybody close to her in the first place. She stumbled away from the water until she stood in the middle of her island and there was nowhere to go anymore. A particular high wave washed over her feet, swallowing the island whole for a second, then another. The next one reached her knees, and soon the whole Island was gone, and Lux felt panic raising in her as the black water lapped at her hip. She lasted a few more seconds like this, desperately searching the water for anything she could grab onto, then a wave crashed over her head and the darkness swallowed her. She blindly tried to swim back to the surface, but there was none – maybe she had already lost all sense of direction in the absolute darkness, maybe the surface had just stopped existing, it didn't matter – and she felt her body getting pulled deeper into the water.
The sounds of the ocean sounded like voices in her ears, like a female voice talking, and the deeper Lux was sinking, the clearer she could hear the voice. It was a woman's voice, and she sounded pleading. Suddenly, there was something in front of her other than darkness, a red shimmer of light. "Please.", said the voice, roaring in her ears, "Please don't kill her."
Lux woke up with a scream.

It took her a few seconds until she realized that she was lying in her bed instead of drowning in darkness. With every breath she took in, her panic lessened, and her heartbeat slowed, but it took Lux multiple minutes to truly calm down. She was drenched in cold sweat and her blanket was lying beside her bed – probably she had thrown it out when she had desperately tried to swim.
The sun was shining through her open window, and she could hear the birds sing. The air in her room was still cool and humid. It had probably rained in the night, assuming from the smell of the incoming air.
A nightmare. A nightmare from hell. Lux was used to nightmares, but it had been months since she had one this bad, one that made her scream and kick in her sleep.
Usually she saw death in her dreams, the battlefield, the bombs, the acid Noxus had used. Sometimes she saw Quinn, nearly getting killed by Katarina. Rarely she saw Garen, in mortal danger, one time he had even really died in her dreams. But nightmares about something else but the war were rare, Lux thought. She had never been on an island, after all, and she didn't have any traumatic memories of drowning. It didn't make any sense.

Well, maybe dreams weren't supposed to make sense all the time, she eventually thought. Maybe sometimes they were just random. And who knew, maybe Lux had had some bad experience with water in the past, to long ago that she could consciously remember it. She could ask Garen about it, he was two years older than her after all.
Lux glanced at the small clock on her nightstand and sighed. It was five o'clock in the morning, she had gone to sleep four hours ago. For a second she debated going back to sleep, but the adrenaline was still in her blood and in the past, her nightmares had had the tendency to continue when she had gone to bed again, so getting more sleep was sadly not an option. Well, coffee would probably have to do.

She pushed herself up and slipped in her shoes. There was no reason to wear anything but pajamas this early in the morning, Lux thought to herself, and if her father had an issue with this, she couldn't care less. Pieter Crownguard would probably sit in his study all morning anyways, trying to come up with ways to gain anything he could possibly gain from Garen's engagement. It made her sick, and she forced her thoughts away from her father.
Adrenaline still flew though her veins, making her feel restless and Lux knew she had to move. Moving her body always helped, when she was in shock, when she was confused, when she was afraid that her memories would never come back. She grabbed her boxing gloves and her staff from the shelve she stored them on and made her way to the cellar of the estate in which the family Crownguard lived.

It was a year since she had started training her body in addition to her magic. A year since she had failed, and yet, stretching and warming up her body still felt weird. It had been Quinn who had suggested that Lux started with it, a month after she had come back from Noxus, clueless about what had gone wrong.
'Whatever it was, the person who beat you probably did so in battle, right?', Quinn had said back then. 'You are a pretty strong mage. I've seen what you can do in the war. So, whoever beat you probably fought in a way that allowed him to avoid your magic, right?'
And Quinn had been right, Lux thought, because there weren't many mages that Lux believed could beat her – but somebody fast enough to dodge her magic, fast enough to get close, would probably have an easy time. It had never been a concern to her in the war, because she had never been alone, Quinn or Garen had usually watched her back and both were more than capable to fight in close combat. But in Noxus she had been alone – and alone, she had failed.

Lux started hitting the sand sack, and with ever smacking sound of her gloves hitting the fabric, she felt better, more awake. With every day that she could hit harder than the last one, she felt more confident, safer. She knew she was still leagues away of being able to fight without her magic, but the pain against her knuckles and the warmth in her muscles reminded her that she was doing something, something else than sitting in her fathers mansion and crying about a failure that she couldn't fucking remember. And if she did something to progress, something to get over this failure, maybe with time, her memories would come back.
Something, maybe it was instinct, told her that they wouldn't. She ignored it, like she always did.

The longer she was hitting the sand sack, the slower her thoughts whirled around. She was still unable to banish the fact from her head that her brother would become engaged this very evening, or that his future fiancé was someone Lux had attempted to kill in the past, but the more her body hurt and the more her muscles ached, the easier it became to just focus on her body instead. Time passed in a blur, and more than an hour had passed when Lux finally stopped. She was spent, her head was blissfully empty, and her stomach was growling angrily. Every muscle in her body was aching, and finally her head wasn't full of black water and a female voice begging for her life anymore.

The kitchen was warm. It always was, ever since Sona had started working here, a fire burning in the small furnace at the side. The smell of a boiling soup filled the air, and when Lux turned around, Sona was there, sitting at the small table in the corner, reading something that looked like a recipe book. She had already looked up when Lux spotted her, and the expression in her eyes was weird, stressed and on edge, until she blinked and it vanished, replaced by the kind smile that she usually wore on her face. For a heartbeat Lux wondered what had ruined her mood, but Sona had shut the book and rose from her chair before she had enough time to worry about her, looking at Lux with her head crocked and her eyebrows raised.

"Good morning.", Lux said, earning herself a smile, "I know I'm up early; I was training. You don't happen to have some leftovers from yesterday somewhere?"
Again the worried expression made its way back in Sona's face, but this time Lux knew why. If she was up and training early, it was usually because some nightmare wouldn't allow her to close her eyes again – and Sona, who possessed the finest hearing of everyone Lux knew, had heard her toss and scream in her sleep often enough to know.
Sometimes Lux wondered if it was because she was mute, because the way that Sona just knew everything going on in the mansion was inhumane, but Sona had lost her ability to speak just a little less than a decade ago as a young teenager, when somebody had cut out her tongue, so maybe she had been born with her extraordinary hearing. Not that it mattered anymore. Sona nodded, and turned around, rummaging in the fridge, eventually presented Lux some bread, soup and a few pieces of sausage.

"You're a lifesaver, you know that?", Lux said, between two spoonsful of soup. "I don't know what I'd do without you. Probably starve."
Sona raised an eyebrow at her and then turned away from Lux and started cutting some vegetables. For a few minutes the kitchen was silent besides the chopping sounds and the quiet noises of Lux eating her food. It was peaceful, Lux thought. She had always liked Sona's company, ever since Garen had turned up with her. Even back then, when Sona had been wrapped in bandages from head to toe, when the medics hadn't even been sure she'd survive, Lux had liked the girl immediately. She was pretty with her long blue hair and had a kind look in her eyes.
It was quite enviable; the way Sona had accepted all the bullshit that fate had thrown at her without growing bitter. Somehow, Sona had turned up by the demacian border unconscious and with horrible injuries, as if somebody had left her there to die, but from everything Lux knew, Sona had never tried to find out what had happened. Lux had heard her cry after the medic had told her there was no way to heal her tongue, that she wouldn't ever be able to form words again, and she had heard her start practicing the piano a day afterwards.

First, Lux had believed that Sona was scared, but that didn't seem to be the case. Over the years, she had started to believe that she had simply decided to let the past be the past and work on the future instead. It was truly admirable.
After she had healed, the Crownguard family had offered her a position as a maid, and she had taken it gratefully, and even since then she had been a constant in Lux' life. Sona had been the one to wish Lux good luck in the war, and her smile had been the thing Lux had come home to afterwards.

Lost in thoughts it took Lux a while to realize that the chopping sounds had stopped, and when she looked up, Sona was staring out of the window with the same stressed look in her eyes that she had had when Lux had entered the kitchen. Her eyes were pinned to the huge gate that marked the entry to the Crownguard estate, like she was waiting for something. Oh.

"I'm sorry.", Lux blurted out. "You must be stressed like hell because the DuCouteaus are visiting later, and I'm probably creating more work for you."
Sona's head whipped around at the sentence, like she had forgotten that she wasn't alone, and the look in her eyes was haunted, nearly panicking. For a second, she just stood there, staring at Lux like she was some kind of monster, then she took a deep breath and smiled again. It looked horribly forced.
"I'm sorry.", Lux repeated, but Sona shook her head and smiled her fake smile again. Lux still got up, feeling horrible to have disturbed her and probably having made even more work at a stressful day. Maybe, they should hire somebody to help Sona.

Feeling her eyes burn in her back, Lux fled the kitchen. The door closed behind her loudly.

The air outside was still humid from the night rain. Lux stood half a step behind her brother, their parents to the left of them. Both Garen and Pieter were wearing formal clothing, and her mother was clothed in a floating blue dress that made her seem even less present then usual, as if she was some kind of ghost, weirdly timeless and uninvested in whatever happened around her. Besides them, Lux seemed to be the odd one out, simply wearing jeans and a shirt, and her father had already shot her an angry look for her appearance, but Lux had ignored it.

Now her eyes were glued to the dark carriage that had just passed the gate, pulled by two sturdy horses. The DuCouteaus. Something about the carriage made it impossible to look away, all the time while it made its way to them, while it stopped, until its driver jumped off to open the door.
The first person to leave the carriage was a middle-aged man with grey hair and sharp green eyes, that seemed to take in everything around him a heartbeat. Marcus DuCouteau, an assassin, who had grown old in the profession. His eyes lingered on Lux for a second, and she had to restrain herself from making a step backwards, then his look moved on to Garen who seemed equally uncomfortable.

After Marcus had stared at them all, he stepped aside, making way for a young woman in a simple, black dress. Katarina. She moved very similar to her father, ever single step seemed to be extremely controlled and just like him she took in their entire surroundings before she left the carriage. Her red hair was flowing down her back like a waterfall, and Lux couldn't help but stare at her. There was something about her that made it impossible to look at anything else but Katarina, as if her mere existence had somehow shifted the gravity around them, had made her the center of the universe. It felt as if Lux was pulled towards her helplessly.

"Welcome to Demacia. I hope, you had a pleasant journey.", Pieter said, and Lux nearly flinched at the sound that reminded her that the world consisted of more than staring at strangers.
"There was no trouble.", Marcus replied, his voice cold and void of emotion. Then he turned to Garen, and his eyes narrowed slightly. "I take it, you're Garen Crownguard?"
"I am. It's a pleasure to meet you.", Garen said, and while Lux could hear a hint of uneasiness in his voice, she doubted that anybody else would be able to notice. He turned to Katarina and bowed down gracefully. "Milady."

Katarina smiled at him and curtsied, and Garen seemed to be relieved about it, but Lux felt as if something cold had run down her neck. It hadn't been a kind smile, not when one looked closely. Katarina didn't smile at Garen like she honestly looked forward to getting to know him, she smiled at him like she had smiled at Quinn back then – looking down at her while she was suffocating, a glimmer of madness in her gaze, a hint of danger. Her smile had followed Lux in her dreams for a while, just like the haunted look that had replaced it. Seeing it directed at her brother now made Lux wanting to grab her staff, to throw a shield between them, but she was unarmed.

"Please just call me Katarina.", she said, her face still smiling in a way that made Lux' alarm bells ring. "I doubt that anybody who actually knows me would call me a lady."
Garen chuckled at that, and then held out his hand. "It's just Garen, then.", he said, and Katarina took his hand and shook it once, just to let it go the second it wouldn't seem improper to do so.
"Well then, Garen.", she said, rolling his name off her tongue like she tried to get used to it. "I hope we'll get along."
It seemed like a warning, at least in Lux' mind, but if it was one, Garen was oblivious to it. He just smiled, a little too much for a polite smile. "I hope so, too."

While Pieter and Marcus started conversing in the background, something about the weather and the trip and pretty places in Demacia that were worth a visit, Katarina turned away from Garen, and for the first time since she had set her eyes on her brother Lux felt like she was breathing again. Maybe it had been the danger she had been sensing, maybe it had been the way that Katarina had looked at Garen like she wanted to cut his throat, but for the first moment in minutes Lux was able to tear her eyes away from her and it was that second that she noticed the man standing behind Katarina.

There wasn't anything memoizable about him. If Lux had to describe him, she'd probably said that he was one of the most average-looking men she had ever met. He had brown hair that fell into his face and reached a little over his ears, and grey eyes that were lying in the shadow of his hooded cape. He was dressed entirely in a blueish grey, the only exception being a pair of metal shoulder caps and a pair of leather straps that crossed over his chest.
For a second, he turned his head a little and Lux realized he was staring at her. His look seemed sharp and concentrated, as if he was waiting for a threat to present itself any second, only that he wasn't looking around – the look was entire directed at her. As if it was Lux who would be the threat. She gulped.

"Oh, don't stare at her like that, Talon. She isn't even armed."
Lux' head whipped around at Katarina' voice, sounding different suddenly, as smooth as silk. She really needed to stop being surprised by people speaking, she noted absently, but the thought fled from her mind the second that Katarina looked at her, the faintest hint of a smirk in her face. She wanted to say something, wanted to greet the other woman and the man whose name was seemingly Talon – Lux was sure she was supposed to know, who he was, but she couldn't remember – but her mind had completely emptied. She was just standing her, trying to form a sentence while staring in Katarina's eyes, green eyes that were so much more alive than anything Lux had ever seen. There was amusement shimmering in them, as if she had just made a joke that Lux just hadn't understood, but somehow, it seemed fake, as if it didn't fit into her face at all.

"Well, it's nice to meet you again, Lux. It's been a while.", Katarina said finally, with a mocking undertone, and sunk into another curtsy, and Lux just stood there, looking down on her, staring. Her throat had gone dry, and it took her what seemed like a small eternity to remember that she was supposed to curtsy too, and even when she did, the pictured of Katarina – the picture of herself looking down on Katarina – had burned itself in her eyes.
"Yeah.", Lux eventually replied hoarsely. "It's nice to meet you."

Again, Katarina had said, again. So, she had noticed, the very second that they met, that Luxanna Crownguard was the same soldier that had attempted to kill her the last time she saw her. Maybe this was also the reason this Talon was looking at her like this. Maybe he knew as well.
"I am sorry Talon stared you down like this. He does it to everybody we meet, though. Don't take it personal.", Katarina said, and turned around to him, an eyebrow crooked.
"I only do it to people I don't trust.", he replied, and narrowed his eyebrows, shooting Lux another sharp look. "She's … a stranger."

The intonation in the last words had been weird, and Lux was sure that something unsaid had passed between the two of them, but the word 'stranger' made her feel sour. Maybe they hadn't met on good terms the last time – which was probably the understatement of the year – but they weren't strangers. It was weird, because Lux would usually call people that she just met on the battlefield strangers as well, however, using the word for Katarina felt just weird in a way Lux wasn't able to explain.
"I'm her future sister in law.", she said instead, sounding more cheerful than she felt, forcing the smile back that Katarina's curtsy and Talons sharp look had wiped off her face earlier. "So, honestly, I don't feel like we should call us strangers."

"What are you guys talking about?", Garen threw in, unaware of the tension that was filling the air thick enough to cut it. How he hadn't noticed the earlier exchange of words, Lux wasn't sure, but chances were that he had been caught up in his father's small talk. When his eyes fell on Talon, he smiled at him. "Talon DuCouteau, isn't it? I'm deeply sorry I didn't notice you standing there earlier."
Garen directed a short bow in his direction, and for a second Talon looked nearly confused at him, then he bowed back with a short: "It's an honor."
"Oh, we were just discussing if Lux and I count as strangers or not. I mean we did meet before, didn't we?", Katarina said, and winked at Lux, who felt her throat go dangerously dry again. She had to suppress a coughing fit, and Garen looked alarmed at her. Well, Lux thought, if Katarina wanted to joke about what had happened in the war, she could too. At least it kept her thoughts away from thoughts like 'Talon is going to murder me in my sleep because I tried to kill Katarina' and 'God how didn't I notice how pretty she actually is until now?'. Especially the second thought was weird as fuck, and she wasn't keen on paying any mind to it right now.
"I mean, there are probably better ways to get to know each other, but I'd say it counts.", she said with a chuckle. When Katarina nodded, still smirking, she added: "Of course, we still have to catch up with a lot of things. For example - what's your favorite color?"

"You're fucking impossible.", Garen groaned, and Lux laughed at it, feeling a little bit lighter. Katarina had tilted her head a little and touched her chin with her index finger, as if she had to think hard about the question. 'She looks adorable like this', ran through Lux' head, before she could quell the thought. "Must be blue.", Katarina eventually said, looking at Lux and for a second there was a hint of sadness in her gaze but it was gone so fast that it was impossible to say if it had even been there in the first place.

"Well, its green for me then.", Lux answered without a lot of thought. It wasn't really as if she had a strong preference, but she'd liked herself a lot more when she was wearing green military uniforms. For a heartbeat Katarina's eye widened, then she turned her head to Garen, who'd just answered with "Golden", making Lux chuckle about it. It was probably cliché for somebody who had grown up with as much money as them, but her brother had always liked fancy things. There even were small gold bands embedded in the plating of his armor, something Lux had gifted him for his promotion to officer a few years ago. She had been given the same title a year later, close to the end of the war, and he had gotten her a new staff.

"Okay, next question.", Katarina eventually said, pulling Lux out of her memories. "What's your favorite food?"
"That's easy, chocolate cake.", Lux answered, and this time it was Garen who rolled his eyes, prompting Lux to add a playfully annoyed "What?"
"That doesn't count. She probably meant real food, like meat.", he said, and Lux put her hand on her hips. "Are you implying that chocolate cake isn't real food?", she asked pouting, and Katarina started to laugh, and maybe, just maybe Lux believed her that she was seriously amused right now. It was hard to tell, because every time the red woman smiled, it felt forced.

"Well, what's yours then?", Garen asked, and when Katarina answered with "Red Wine", he closed his eyes and sighed.
"You guys are impossible, and now I've got to deal with both of you. I might as well start writing down my will.", he said, and Lux hit him against the shoulder, grinning. "Oh, stop being dramatic. "
"Then stop being annoying.", he retorted. She shrugged. "You love me."
"That won't stop me from strangling you."

Katarina had watched them, but what might or not might have been honest amusement a few seconds ago had disappeared from entirely. Instead her eyes darted between Garen and Lux as they bantered, her face barring any expression. Garen didn't notice – he had never been good with understanding or even noticing other people's emotions – but to Lux it was as obvious as it could be. Katarina had that empty look of somebody who was trying very hard to not think about something, who was trying to use every single braincell to concentrate on the here and now, because every other thought would hurt. Something in their conversation must have triggered a horrible memory, and Lux wished she knew what, because she didn't want to hurt her. Maybe, one day she would ask, but not today, not now.

"There's going to be a banquet in a few hours.", she said instead, to stir the topic as far away as possible from favorite foods and Garen's will. "Our father hired a band, so there's going to be dancing. And food. We've probably one of the best cooks of Demacia."
Garen nodded at the words, but it was Katarina who Lux watched from the corner of her eyes, and thankfully, the empty look eased a little at her words, and slowly she seemed to gain back her composure and control. Then Katarina blinked, and back was the confident and playful look. So, it really was a mask. It was only fair, Lux thought, because she was wearing one too.
"It's supposed to be in our honor. To celebrate both the engagement and the resumption of trade.", Garen added to Lux' words, completely oblivious to his future fiancée's mask slipping, completely unaware of his sister noticing it.

"Sounds fun. I hope they'll have wine there, though. And chocolate cake."
Katarina winked at Lux, and Lux' heart skipped a beat, just to start racing afterwards. It's a mask, she told herself, It's a mask, and the only thing I should feel is jealously because she's better at faking happiness than I am.
And she knew it, knew the wink was just because Katarina had noticed herself slipping up and was trying to make up for it now, because if Lux had been in her place she wouldn't want to seem weak in front of somebody who was barely more than a stranger to her either, but the thought was barely enough to stop her from blushing. Lux tried very hard to not think about what it meant that Katarina winking at her got more of a reaction than Ezreal Lighfeather's love confession a few months ago. This is neither the time nor the place for these thoughts.

"There's always chocolate cake and I've yet to see a demacian feast that doesn't end with a few nobles drunk on wine.", she said, ignoring the blood still pounding in her ears, trying very hard to make her voice sound just as light as it had been a few seconds ago. "I usually leave somewhere at midnight, because if I have to watch my general vomiting on his wife ever again … well, let's just say I wouldn't be obeying his orders anytime soon."
The comment got a snort of laughter out of Katarina, but something in her smile had changed in, as if the woman was very happy with herself. So much about hoping she hadn't noticed what an effect she had on Lux, she thought darkly.

"Your general vomited over his wife in front of one of his officers? I'd certainly like to see that.", Katarina said, voice smooth as honey.
"In front of two officers, actually. Both Lux and I were there. His wife wanted to dance waltz and he tried and got sick in the middle of the dance floor. Pretty sure he was multiple bottles in at that time, because I tried to stop him after the first one something like an hour before that. The only thing that saved his reputation was that neither Lux nor I told anyone else.", Garen added.
Katarina laughed at that, and the two of them continued talking, Garen telling a few more stories of nobles embarrassing themselves at the yearly Crownguard's banquet, but Lux zoned out of the topic. None of those things had been as funny as they sounded now. People had been fired for acting stupid on alcohol. The fact that said general still had his job afterwards had been a small miracle, and if Lux hadn't convinced Garen to sweep it under the rug, if it hadn't been in the middle of the war and the man had been dangerously competent, that miracle likely wouldn't have happened.

She let her gaze sweep to the side, where her father was still talking to Marcus DuCouteau, and distantly she wondered why his wife wasn't with them, but Soreana DuCouteau hadn't made a public appearance in ages if she remembered correctly. There had been rumors that she was dead, but Katarina's family had vehemently denied this. Lux personally thought that maybe she was sick, maybe something hade made her unable to walk, or something psychological. She could ask Katarina later, but if her suspicion was right, it would be a rather personal question and she couldn't imagine that Katarina would be comfortable answering it.

A drop of rain landed in her face, and she flinched in shock at the cold sensation. When she looked at Katarina and her brother, Katarina's eyes were sparkling in amusement.
"I just asked if you want to come inside with us.", Garen said, "because it looks like it's going to rain and we all still have to change into something suitable for the banquet."
"Although I'd like to know what you were thinking about if it makes you zone out like this.", Katarina added playfully.
Why half of Noxus thinks that your mom died eight years ago, Lux thought, but she instead she just smiled and answered with a "Nothing of importance".