N.B.
Attempt to write fanfiction
Write a 12k+ long chapter (that's, like, around three quarters as long as the whole story before this chapter?)
Blame vOceanic
I present to you Chapter Six, after a half-year long wait. I apologize for the writing speed – I just write a lot better when I have a lot of free time and that tends to happen when I'm vacationing in Europe. Demacia architecture = France OP. Posting this the night before I fly back to North America OP.
This chapter is going to be dedicated to vOceanic (one of these days I'll do to you what Ezreal does to Lux, huehuehue) and the late Ms. Zhou Weiling. Both have been incredibly inspirational people who encouraged me to write and love. Maybe in heaven, Ms. Zhou, you'll be spared that terrible kind of pain T_T; happy birthday, vOceanic, I'm still terribly sorry I can't ship you Belgian chocolate (not on time, anyways).
If you've been following this story for a while, well – I admire your tenacity in following this story. I'll try to cook out at least one more supersized chapter before the summer's over; wish me luck fitting all the symbolism in between throat MRIs.
Aloice, out
Demacia, five years ago
She leans back against the marble pillars of the Jarvan II bridge, watching the river currents in the cold rain.
It's almost night; the sun has set, the rainy stratocumulus clouds are spreading, and the last traces of warm color are draining away from the little fragments of empty sky. The final few lines of new soldiers are hurriedly crossing the bridge, barely still in formation, eager to end a long wet day of seemingly endless drills; General Whitefield gives her a curt nod as he passes by, his spotless uniform in stark contrast to the stained messes worn by his recruits, and she salutes back, her expression the most correct mix of reverence, confidence and wariness.
"Colonel Crownguard, report to me at my office at eight o'clock. I want to discuss your next assignment with you personally."
"Absolutely, General Whitefield." That's probably a promotion, she thinks, remembering the looks on the other colonels' faces when she returned from the Noxian assignment. Jealousy. Hatred. Wariness. They were whispering behind her back, blond respectable heads menacing in the dark corridors. It's her family. Garen Crownguard's influence. Exaggeration, lies, sexual favors. She won't last. Not like us. She had stood with a face like stone, her baton flickering with clear white light.
Demacia, now. The rain is relentlessly running down her cheeks, sending continuous shivers down her spine. It's cold. Coldness bodes for a long Freljord season, more crops in the South, and more casualties in the Army. The golden angels atop the bridges seem to be weeping, their tears lamenting their inability to take up weapons and join the war themselves; as she stops beneath the statue of St. Michael, she raises a hand slightly, catching the holy stream falling from the tip of his staff. O angel, if only I can be as great as you. If I could just blind the enemies with my light and make them see the wrongs of their ways… I want to shine like the jewel adorning your treasured weapon, become the eternal beacon of the long night –
"…Colonel…"
"Three hours to –" she starts responding automatically before hearing the strain in the girl's voice. The water on her hand suddenly chills, forcing a small, stifled gasp. She drops the hand abruptly.
"…Colonel Crownguard…"
Silence.
"…I can't…"
Lux closes her eyes, willing time to stop.
Don't say it.
Please, for the love of all the angels on this bridge and His Majesty the King himself, don't say it.
I've been trying to forget it. Ignore it. Like I do many things. And I want to win for once.
"…do this anymore."
Sera Hattori is thirteen. Like all new recruits, she has to pass the last physical test today. Unlike the other recruits, she's still here, tied to the bottom of the bridge, three quarters of her body submerged under the icy surface of the river, three hours after the official tests have concluded. A vision of the girl's deathly face from the day before floats into Lux's mind, haunting and so, so excruciatingly familiar, and the Colonel has to clench her fists to stop herself from shaking.
"I can fish you out again, you know." Lux's voice is even. Conceal. Don't feel. Don't turn around to look at her. Just stare at the waves, at these inky patterns, at the depths – "We can just try again after you rest for a little bit. You still have three hours."
"You've tried enough, Colonel." The younger girl's voice is small. Sad. Somehow impossibly final.
"The crystal?"
"I've used up all of it, Colonel. You… you can't save everyone."
The water swirls. The heroes and gods from the bridges and the splendid buildings on the river banks stare down emotionlessly. The sky has turned completely dark, the only sources of light being her wavering baton and a dim yellow bridge lamp. Lux can't see Sera's face, not when Sera can't even see her own limbs, but under the light, she can barely make out her own reflection in the river. Distorted. Dark. Upset. An image of her that, had Lux seen it in a mirror, she would have forcibly broken. That's not me, she would have said. I am not weak. I do not get frustrated. I will never compromise my country, my abilities, my emotions, myself –
Fear. Anger. Two emotions Luxanna Crownguard hasn't felt in a long time. Two emotions she has long forgotten how to handle. Two emotions that can utterly destroy her, and far more than her –
"I'm not a hero, Colonel." The girl laughs bitterly. "I'm not Mars or St. Garamond or even a capable soldier. You, you are the real thing, the diamond – "
"Shut up." Lux's voice is almost a hiss. The image in the water agitates, the human face falling apart.
" – but I'm not. Not everyone can be. I'm a piece of pencil lead." Sera's voice is getting weaker by the syllable, but it stays bone-chillingly matter-of-fact. "Colonel, I'm going to die before I can complete this test."
"We can always – "
"Why do you care?" Sera's voice suddenly cuts through the night, sharp and demanding. It's a question fueled with a teenager's last clutches on life, and a question that Lux has not wanted to answer. "You have watched many of us die. You know that… if we quit, if we fail these introductory tests, it's just the same… if not worse than actually dying. We can't lose our honor, our worth on the field, not when… it's the last thing many of us have. So why? Why do you care? Why let us use that crystal? Your most prized crystal, the one you've had ever since joining the military, the one that has seen all your achievements? Why do you try to stop the inevitable? Mars, St. Garamond, the General, the King…"
Sera gasps for breath as her throat makes a coarse, gurgling noise. Lux turns away from the unsalvageable picture of herself in the water, her eyes wet.
"…None of them care, so why do you?"
The baton flickers ominously. The world falls quiet. Lux Crownguard takes a deep breath as she gazes into the starless night sky. A cruise passes under the bridge, throwing a wave onto Sera and making her splutter in agony.
"I don't."
"What?"
"I don't care about you," Lux Crownguard said icily. "You were wrong about me. I'm just like the rest of them, but with an extra twist. The hope going out of your eyes, the denial… I've laughed over every body I've seen. I've always spat on you as I stood over your bloated corpses… why should I have any sympathy for the failures of nature? You'll die, new ones will come, and I will move on. Now, take all the time you need, General Hyall is coming…"
"You cared!" Sera screams, turning her head to stare hatefully as Lux starts sprinting down the bridge and away from her. "You did! I held on all this time because I respected you and didn't want to hurt you! Why – "
The rain. The river. The tears. Ice, water, the steam rising from my baton. Water will carry Sera away. Water will hide my tears. Water will erode, erase, make it okay. Water will wash away death, wash away sins, wash away lies. In this water I can be silent. In this water I can pretend. It's always raining when they die. It's always raining when I run. Maybe one of these days, when rain hits harder than swords and I can't hold everything back, I'll slip and fall, losing my own fight. Today, however, the water will still guard me. Today I am still alive. Today I am still divine. Today she will pass, but I will not die.
"–WHY WOULDN'T YOU JUST TELL THE TRUTH –?!"
A powerful stroke of lightning slices across the sky and the bridge is suddenly showered in a bestial, horrifyingly line of light. Lux grinds to a halt at the base of the bridge, panting under the spotlight, helpless blue eyes wide. In the darkness, Sera stares into oblivion, betrayed and defiant. "Surely heaven will strike down liars."
The light does not kill anyone that day.
The light, however, will be a scarred witness, carrying all the weight of a traumatic death.
Brigadier General Luxanna Crownguard watches as the corpse is flung overboard, her face unreadable.
"This generation is unreliable," General Whitefield complains as he leaves the boat, his nose wrinkled in disgust. Sera Hattori has been dead what? – three days? – maybe more; recovering recruits' bodies has never been a priority for the Demacian military. "Crownguard, you're doing well, but less of these in the future, please."
"Yes, General. Pershan? Have you found my crystal? It should have been on her person." She inquires, her voice level and unaffected.
"It has been returned to your office, Brigadier General."
"I'll pay for a common grave. Just take her like the others." She turns to have one last good look at Sera's wasted face, but doesn't say anything; a hand reaches out to smoothen the uniform the young girl had died wearing, but doesn't quite reach Sera's hand.
"'m – sarry," Luxanna Crownguard says to herself, sitting alone on the polished steps to the royal library.
It's a much prettier night; the moon is high overhead, the weather calm, but the new brigadier is drunk, letting herself loose on one of the few nights when she is off duty. It's wrong, as much against the rules as helping recruits who are struggling to make it through tests and training. Feels wrong. Can't shoot lasers. Can't think right. Can't feel.
"Dis. Alcohol. Actually be the best water of them all. Not salty. Not cold. I should drown in it. I'm sowwy, okay? Don't hate me. I left flowers. Lights. Pwetty lights. The kind you liked. Seeeeeeeeeeeera. You were a bad girl. Bad. You made me show you. You said you liked those things."
Suddenly she's exhausted. The world's brewing. Too hot. Too unbearable. This world feels wrong; with all these deaths, all these shadows of regret, surely it is not the same world the angels had created many millenia ago. Maybe everything is a dream. Everything since a couple years ago.
"I'm sorry," Luxanna Crownguard mumbles to the sky, as she stumbles back alone towards the barracks, smelling of liquor and grief and death.
Shurima Desert, the present
Shock, disappointment, anger, pain, loneliness, despair.
Her retinas shatter behind the feeble barriers of the flesh and she screams, screams with every part of her being as the veil of darkness abruptly falls over her soul, as heavy and final as a Demacian guillotine. Her hands claw at her hair, at her face, oblivious to the pain pounding in her skull or the blood streaming down her cheeks; she's just trying desperately to find something to cling onto, something to create denial with, something to live with.
"My name is Lux, the Demacian word for light. Where there is light, there is me!"
The Sun. The smiles of the citizens in the crowds. The way the dawn colors the entire Royal Palace a delicate shade of gold those few precious days of autumn. The way the high noon blaze makes her armor look like it was made from mother-of-pearl –
She reaches out with a bloodstained hand, pleading to some deity, any deity. Don't. Don't take those things from me. Don't –
Again, just like the guillotine: she's losing that future like a victim losing their final stretches of consciousness, and as much as she can flail, plead or pray, she can never change her own fate. Lux Crownguard opens her mouth to scream again, but nothing comes out; everything is disappearing faster than the Sun during a solar eclipse, and before she has had any time to close her mouth, she has lost everything that isn't a wide field of static.
The hand droops in defeat. Drops of blood falls soundlessly onto the ground, mournful as the tears they will now forever replace.
It's almost just like the first time.
Who knew that you could kill a child by slamming a door on her face and telling her that to you she had never been more than prized national property? Who knew that you could break a little girl by letting her cry for help in front of everyone she had ever known, only to be rejected at every turn?
She had lost everything once. Her home, her friends, her faith – she had thought she'd die then, but with a suggestion, she had retreated deep within herself. If Demacian hell was pressure and temperature and everything that should not be experienced by a living soul, at least it converted her into an immaculate diamond.
But you can only put back together so many pieces of a heart after the first fall.
There are fault lines.
Fault lines that break when the light fades, and diamonds are burned into wisps of air.
Do I still exist? Do I even care? Does anyone still care?
There's no heart anymore, no light, so: an endless pit. A drop of blood splashes onto a limb, and she winces as if she has been stabbed.
I don't know how to live like this.
She has had nightmares before, dreams on losing her sight that made her jolt up and spray lasers for minutes at the barracks walls. The fear then had been paralyzing, but the real thing itself…
I'm dead
I'm dead
I'm dead
I've known ever since that fateful day at home that I'm only useful as a light mage
Only for my light
Only the light
Only light
Gathering what little is left of her sanity, she wills herself to see. She will will herself to pick and choose, to pick light and life instead of darkness and death, although she knows full well that she can't make that choice, not anymore. The pain is growing and spreading, the blood breaking from the clots and making her nauseaous, but – what's even a lifetime of pain compared to losing one's life?
The world turns. She loses her balance. Vision flicks a second of crimson red, then turns dark again. She bites her lips as she feels something break within her eyes, the snap as it takes her breath away; blood splatters onto her hands, warm but desolate.
It smells like a verdict.
And I know what's the worst thing about all of this.
Even when I know I shouldn't care
Even when I know I'm better off dead
Even when I know I am dead
She's a hurt little girl again, a girl without a home, a girl without anyone to love or to love her, a girl who's hurt and tired and so, so scared.
I just want to live.
Deep within the labyrinth of the ruined room, Lux Crownguard weeps blood.
Lux?
Luxanna!
Miss Crownguard?
Can you hear me, Miss Crownguard?
She inhales deeply. The room smells like sweet rust and ashes. Lux?
That name is echoing back from a world that doesn't exist anymore.
No one's ever told me how to live after I die. The dead in Demacia don't tell tales. Either the buried dead or the living dead – they're just walking piles of flesh, waiting for the sun to fall and the light in them to go out. There are no phoenix stories, where I'm from. If you burn, even if you come back through the Gates of Hell, there's nothing left. There's only darkness. The darkness I'm surrounded by now. A beating heart of lead, a world without color.
"There's only one thing, now," she recites. The words thunder in her ears. The only thing left for the world to give her. The one thing long overdue. "Rain."
She holds her breath and waits for the truth –
– And it falls, right on cue.
The thunder. It's slow, deliberate, as if the myths are true and heaven is using it as a weapon of judgment. Just like five years ago, it's approaching slowly, and in her mind's eye Lux saw a Demacian angel walk towards her, his hands tainted with the blood of those she couldn't save, his mind intent on her soul.
She crawls towards him. The petrichor is filling her nose forcefully, the desert soil – even the soil of an oasis – not used to this volume of water. The water of life. The water of death. The water that protected me, and kept me divine. The water that will surely take me now, today. O angel, take me, just take me. Getting smited at your hand would be more merciful than living this life without having anything in sight. Let me disappear, for I am lost. Let me fade with this rain, fade before I have to face the world. I am a coward. I have failed my name as a bringer of light.
He pulls her into his arms. His movements are slow, deliberate, gentle. She turns in shock, the rain running down her devastated face. No.
"Oh, Lux. Lux, I'm sorry."
Why? A part of her screams. Why now?
"Lux." No angels. No judgment. Only human suffering in the rain, pain as she wishes a flash of light and heat would strike her dead on the spot. "It's Ezreal."
"Drink this," Aria murmurs. Out of everyone who frequents the temple, her voice is the most distinctive – it's heavily accented, musical and authoritative, sometimes even maternal. As she takes the cup, a pungent smell collides with Lux's nostrils, making her headache flare up again; seeing the look on the Demacian's face, Aria apologizes, handling the younger girl another cup of water. "I'm sorry it must taste this terrible – I'm usually better with it – but it should help with the bleeding."
The first gulp nearly sends Lux bolting to throw up. By the second gulp, however, she has remembered her pitiful condition, and how swallowing a spicy herbal soup cannot possibly be worse than swallowing her fate. She drinks freely, ignoring the anxious breaths of the older woman, drinking only to have something to do.
"Yuna Aria." Wind without footsteps – Janna. Even more anxious than Aria somehow. "Aria, you're needed at the East End. A child is bleeding and burning a high fever, and the villagers think he's cursed."
"Can you go to West End?" Aria replies, her voice troubled. "I heard there's also plague breaking out there. A riot, too. Just hold them down, tell them that I'll be coming, send Rigel if you have to –"
"I'll go." Ezreal, now. There's always a subtle sense of hesitation in his steps, something she has never noticed before. A soft undertone underlies his voice, too, but that's something she has disliked ever since meeting him. "I'll take Rakib and the men. The villagers will probably listen to me, they listened to my eulogy well enough… it's a good thing the fire went out before the first rain ever came down. They're already speaking of terrible omens."
"I don't blame them. Not with this air, this rain, the murder, and Lux's injury. It's getting harder and harder for me to breathe." Aria sighs heavily. The monotonous mortar and pestle sounds stop briefly, and then resume. "You're drenched from head to toe, eh-kara. You should change into something warmer."
"Don't mind me. I should be the least of anyone's troubles. I'm going to go now, probably going to meet you all back here for dinner." Weariness and wariness in a young man's voice, somehow deep as the Conqueror's Sea – Lux has seen and heard it before, sensed it on the faces of soldiers coming home from long exhausting wars. Sometimes some days are simply too long, but it never matters. Duty comes first. She wishes her memory has disappeared like her sight, so that she can just sit like a mindless doll and not be reminded of all she has lost. I still wish he had been an angel. He would have annihilated me, but that would have been mercy.
The currents near Janna stir. "Someone should look after Luxanna."
"I'll ask a little girl I know. I've taught her some healing…" Aria paces by the stove. Although the new medicine smells as sweet as the hybrid mandarin oranges in the Demacian palaces, Lux can't help but cover her nose. Nothing sweet. Not now. Not when it feels like everything nice in the world is laughing at me. "It's not ideal, but it will have to do."
The door creaks. Tiny, light footsteps tap off the wooden floor, ephemeral as a butterfly dancing between blossoms. Lux hugs the blanket closer to herself, her senses still tingling from the aftertaste of the soup.
"You don't have to bother about me, child. Feel free to do whatever you want. Aria says you can take some toys from home."
The footsteps stop; a girl's voice is carried by the wind through half of the temple, plaintive but somehow religiously sincere. "It doesn't matter. I don't like them."
A seven-to-eight year old who dislikes entertainment? "Why?"
"I'm an orphan," the child says simply. She skips to Lux's side, her pure desert breath warm near the older girl's cheeks. "I don't have anyone to play with. My Momma bought me those, too… it reminds me of them, but they're gone. I play them to make yuna feel better." A shrug is the response to Lux's held breath. "It works."
What was I doing at seven? Rainbows in the water? Hating the court etiquette lessons? "I'm sorry."
"It's okay." A pause. "It just hurts, being lonely. I'm my own Momma and no one will ever yell at me or beat me and I get to be yuna's apprentice, but…"
The sentence trails off. Lux imagines the child looking down guiltily at the floor, and blinks hard in frustration, unwittingly sending a shockwave of pain crashing through her brain. In the silence of the temple, they can hear each other's anxious breaths.
"I understand," Luxanna Crownguard whispers, the words vibrating in her mind in time with the persisting headache throbs. I know it's true. "I'm an orphan, too."
A breath being sucked in. "Can we be friends, then?"
Maybe it can make up for all the friends I had but never kept. Or all the friends I had but never had. One space of time she was locked in her room frantically writing a farewell letter to Laura that she knew would never arrive, and the next she was congratulating a colonel who once captured by the Noxians would accuse her of terrible war crimes. Someone wants me now? Abandoned by my guardian angels, my country, my powers? "Would you take me?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Look at me." What's more horrifying? My eyes or what I am? "I have two bloody holes in my skull. I can't do magic anymore. I'm dead to my country. I – "
"You're fine, kara," the child insists, cupping Lux's face. A line of blood runs down a wound and both of them flinch as they feel it make contact with the child's hands; those fingers, though, remain steady, and even while quivering, Lux cannot deny the faith bringing a flush of color to her cheeks. Ezreal mentioned this at one point, she remembers distantly. The villagers can get quite physically intimate when they want to convince you of something. "Have hope. Yuna Aria can perform miracles with her magic. Your hair is still super gorgeous, prettier than the first dawn… and if Kinar Kiah and Eh-Kara Ezreal taught us anything, it's that even in an endless darkness, the light will still come."
"But I was a light mage." The roles are reversed; Lux is the child, seeking reassurance and attention. The clock tolls ten and they both stop to let it pass, Lux staring frantically into space as the younger girl lets her cheeks go. "That's why nothing matters anymore. All my life I was defined by my light magic, praised and criticized for my use of it – why would people care about me if I can't even see my own light magic anymore?"
The outburst echoes off the walls. Lux closes her mouth immediately. I can't do this to a child. Not when she won't even understand what any of it means. "I'm sorry. I'll be quiet now."
"You should be careful, kara." Lux's own towel – it's only when the soft surface rubs against Lux's skin that she realizes that she's been bleeding quite heavily again. "Your head is hurt."
Yes, I'm hurt. Everything hurts. When was the last time that someone cared? That anyone cared? I could hold it all in when no one cared, but once anyone shows me any sympathy, I start falling apart like a pile of bricks in a hurricane. "My heart hurts, too."
"Kara just can't see anymore, right? Your magic is still there?"
"It doesn't work like – "
"Aren't you still a light mage, then?"
"I won't be able to – "
"Can you make a rainbow still?" The girl interrupts again, her voice filled with that unique longing excitement only young children can muster. "Please please please, I haven't seen one since my Momma's death. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean I can't."
Children. That innocence. That ability to ignore the harder truths of the world, to not ache at just the mentions of words – the word rainbow, just those two small syllables rolling off a foreign girl's tongue, is enough to knock Lux breathless and leaves her wondering if she's in some kind of purgatory. She's been lonely, but her parents didn't leave her willingly, not like mine. She hasn't been forbidden to cast rainbows. She hasn't had to watch all her childhood friends leave, the last thing she showed them being a perfect double rainbow…
I don't know why I repeat it on the Fields. Some kind of subconscious thing, maybe. Laughing at my pain. Laughing at my wounds so they feel less trivial. Laughing, but laughing in a way that just isn't real, isn't the way I used to laugh as a child… it scares everyone, friend and foes alike, because they think I'm mad. I am probably mad. At too many things, though.
The baton's gone. She's tapped dry. She reaches for the pocket beneath her heart, but her hand freezes just above her clavicle –
What are you afraid of? What's there to lose, now?
"You won't laugh at me," Pleading. "if it turns out really terribly, right?"
"I'll kiss you," Those small hands again, patting her shoulder, the warmth flowing through and making her shiver. "I'll kiss you the way yuna kisses me, when I am sad. Are you made of light, too? There's a tiny sun, where your heart is."
She swallows down the pain burning through her like storms of static, letting it run through her and resuscitate her dying heart as her fingers close around the crystal above her chest. That crystal will always remain warm, even after everything it's went through, all the hours of traumatic memory that it recalls. Sera had gone down with it in the freezing rain, the darkness of the water surely more suffocating than the darkness of sight. Ran had prayed to the angels with its light as she stopped breathing, the mountains too cruel on her fragile lungs. She herself had stared at it for many nights crying alone in the barracks, calculating just how much energy she had to store in it so she could make through the next round of trials.
But I've always used it when I wanted to please someone else. I've never used it for war or glory, or even to help myself try to take down Aquelis… I can't do it, not when that Demacian lady gave it to me to save me. I didn't want to taint it, not when it was the best part of me, even if it never works. It couldn't save Sera and Ran, it couldn't save that entire row of soldiers near Kalamanda, and it couldn't even save me. But it's a tiny sun, where my heart is?
It glows?
She throws off the blanket, a prayer choking in her lungs. Let me understand. Let me believe in her. "Can you kiss me, anyway?"
"On the temple?" The child asks, and then coughs. "Ugh, the air's terrible. I'd have to replace the incense soon…"
"Anywhere."
The desire to be loved flames her more than any Demacian general who has ever shared her tent, and in the overwhelming darkness, it burns more than anything, a resounding cry for light. This is what I've always wanted. It doesn't matter who it is, where it is, or even to some extent why – I just want to be loved as Luxanna the human being, the Lux that can get scared, the Lux that hates to lose and the Lux that takes too long to forget. Anyone can love Lux the Lady of Luminosity, Lux the Kingdom's Delight, but I just want someone to tell me that it's okay when I'm naked in the dark, all too terrified of an eternal night. I want someone to believe that I am beautiful even when I am not. I want someone to tell me that I am not alone. I want someone to tell me that my rainbows make them the happiest person in the world…
She bites the crystal between her teeth as the girl stretches up to kiss her forehead. The light shimmers, turning into sparkles of brilliance behind her, a curtain of light not unlike the auras behind the gods of the sky. The light splinters and whirls before weaving into multicolored threads, a gigantic rainbow iridescent in the smoky air; she wraps her arms around the little girl, pulling her into an embrace that is all desperation and craving and wishing the world is different, and as the girl hugs back, she dreams of daylight, of the first time she danced in the Hall of Mirrors and the last night she slept through without dreaming of anyone's death. I just want to be human, she shouts into the darkness, with all the wishes to defy she has stored up for more than a decade. I just want to love and be loved, be a beacon of light.
"That's a rainbow worthy of the gods," the child exclaims with a religious fervor over her shoulders, her youthful voice breaking through the heavy air like a chime. Admiring. Loving. Just like Sera - just like all the children on the streets - like Laura, like Shauna. "Please, do it again! I didn't –"
Lux bends over, crying from empty sockets.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please don't cry. Please don't hurt yourself." And the child's crying too, actual tears falling onto the temple floor, two girls intertwined together on the ground in front of the serene faces of the gods of the sky.
"Can I live with you?" She blurts out as the little girl finishes the final knot in her hair, letting the golden braids fall down freely onto the Demacian's shoulders. "I'm good at learning and adapting. I can learn how to cook, how to worship your gods… I'm sure I can find a way to earn my keep."
The child climbs up the bed to tend to her wounds, towel splashing against the bowl of water as she washes away the bloodstains. "Your rainbows are beyond lovely, svet-kara," the younger girl says softly. "You can probably make a fortune showing my people those alone."
"Svet-kara – I'm sorry, what does that mean again?"
"Kara is a honorific for a young adult," A series of small coughs. "Eh-kara is the passionate one, the one who brings love. Svet-kara is the bright one, the one who brings light."
"I don't deserve that." Also, Ezreal, love? Since when?
"I have eyes, still, svet-kara." An amused laugh – the sincerity of it hurts her, hurts her more than Lux Crownguard would ever want to admit. So I wish Garen was like this. So I wish the generals at home had gossiped about Garen telling me he loves me, instead of him telling me he wants me to enchant his armor. If I had been born here, if I had had a real sister, even if my parents were to leave… "Also, why wouldn't you go back to Demacia? Isn't that where you are from?"
"Demacians' eyes are different." They'll only want me back if I can cast blind. It won't be rainbows for them, nothing pretty or heartwarming for the throne – they just want my shields and my binds, my lasers as it bursts people into pieces. The only light colors Demacia care about are white and red, white for cerebrospinal fluid and red for blood… it might as well be as colorless as the night. Darius' axe would not miss my head just because I can't see it. Katarina would only make me beg for mercy, and then laugh at me as she slits my throat before the King.
"The Piltoverians, then? Isn't the eh-kara your friend? I'm sure he'd offer to take you back with him."
"Oh, they'll ditch me, dear. They will lose too much by taking me back with them. I won't blame them when they leave me behind."
"But eh-kara won't," the child insists quickly. The sounds of shuffling and footsteps, and then an extra heavy dose of incense, right beneath Lux's flaming nostrils. "I have the Statue of the Goddess of Andromeda right here with me. She's the patron goddess of promises. And I promise you eh-kara is a nice person."
But I don't want to go with Ezreal. I don't want to go to Piltover. "Do you not want me to stick around?"
That was said to invoke guilt, and it is very effective. "No, no, that's not what I meant at all. It's just… you are all champions of the League, aren't you? I thought you all had like, a super tight bond or something. Especially since eh-kara said you are his friends, and that Piltover is a pretty awesome place."
"Oh, yeah, Piltover is pretty chill alright," a tired voice rings near the temple door. "Dina, can I talk to Lady Luxanna for a moment? Yuna Aria is asking for you – she's at her place, brewing by the window. Oh, and take this face mask. Don't ever take it off."
A small hand squeezes Lux's hands tightly before letting go; a don't leave chokes in Lux's throat right as the child dances away from her, too reverent of Ezreal and trusting of his authority. "I'll come back when I can, svet-kara. Don't forget what I said to you. Feel better!"
I can't call her back like that. Not in front of him. Fuck you, Ezreal. Fuck you a thousand times. When have you ever been good news? At this rate, you'll be a better harbinger of doom than Fiddlesticks. She strains to hear those light footsteps, prays as hard as she can that the child would hear her internal screams, her frustration, her need to be with people who will offer her sympathy; the seraphim always just fly away into the clouds, however, and she's sinking again, sinking in that pool of darkness and cold, that lonely patch of black between the stars in the sky that no one ever puts a second thought to.
"Svet-kara, huh?" Ezreal murmurs incredulously, turning his head presumably to watch the little girl run away. "I never thought she would be that insensitive."
"If anyone is ever insensitive, it's you," she snaps, and a long silence falls between the two of them as the Piltoverian secures the last lock in the temple door.
Water, again. Water freezing into ice under the power of Ezreal's gauntlet, the solid cubes clashing against each other in the ceramic bowl he has taken from the child. Water splashing as he dips the towel in it, washing it over and over. Water falling, flowing, cracking. Water hissing as he dumps large solid chunks of herbs into it, the bitter aroma spreading far and wide, drowning out the incense and the scent of grief he carries with him like a cloak.
He breathes slowly, as if each one hurts him the way her existence hurts her. The air seems to congeal around them as the Piltoverian makes his rounds between the statues of the gods, his Shuriman prayers to them shushed. There's a whole basket of desert flowers that he has left by her feet, and he's leaving a pile for each god standing still on their altar, his lips whispering Spica and Procyon.
She almost manages to tune him out. It's still infuriating.
"Why do you hate me, Lux?" A string of syllables like falling leaves and dark water. Something in that voice has died since he last spoke of the sunrise.
"What do you want from me, Ezreal?"
Another silence. And then, positively wounded: "Why would I always want something from soneone?"
"You always want something from everything you touch, don't you?"
"Not people," He replies in a hard voice. "Never people."
"So answer my first question." An ice cube plummets onto the ground. "Why are you here?"
"I'm here to talk to you and to pray for the impossible. I just asked the gods – not as one of their own, no less – to change their decision on the fate of an entire village. Oh, no. I did not ask. I demanded. I can't speak up in this temple, but I could use my thoughts to scream. If they are really gods – if they are really Kiah's gods, gods that I can respect after all this is said and done – they would hear me."
When was the last time someone dared to even have a lingering thought like that under a Demacian angel? The Gods are Gods. They are unquestionable, divine, and often – too often – indifferent or cruel. "Why isn't Aria praying for it, then?"
A tiny, disbelieving chuckle. "You really have been completely blind, haven't you?"
Her hands find the crystal under her blanket and her heart has to fight to control that wave of black rage. "Less blind than you to people's suffering."
"Oh, really? Then how do you not know that Aria's dying?" There's an anger in him that she has never expected him to possess, a genuine bleeding frustration much like her own. He strides by her, towering over Lux's curled-up form; she sticks her head out, unwilling to let him feel superior. "She hasn't been able to leave her house since two hours ago. We were all going to come back here for dinner, but the only one who can still walk is me… Janna's lying on Kiah's old bed, throwing up bile as she tries to focus on her spells. The entire village has contracted a plague, Luxanna Crownguard. Five elderly people have died, and the air's so terrible that I can't even light a fire to send them off."
The crystal under her hands goes out. A crack reopens near her hairline, pouring fresh crimson blood onto the blankets.
"Why the hell," She screams, "Did you send her away, then? She was fine. Are you so cruel, Ezreal of Piltover, that you just doomed a child to die, too?"
A part of him crumbles. He slids onto the ground, hopeless. "I've been listening to your conversation outside the temple for a while, Crownguard. She has been coughing the entire time. All the kids – that's what it starts with. I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, but I don't think she was fine. Janna says it's the air, so I gave her a mask like everyone else – we can't save her, though. She's better off going back to Aria and helping out with the patients. I know her, she would want to be there if Aria doesn't – "
"Tell me," she interrupts in that same hysterical tone, looking down at him without looking. It's the same look she threw at her father right before they took her away, desperate but empty, searing but frigid. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Yes," he replies simply. "Stay with me."
"How do I stay with you?" She hisses, filling up her voice with venom. "Should I kiss you? Seduce you? Talk about how wonderful you are, like the rest of them who have not seen your true colors – "
"That's fine," he mumbles. "Scream at me. Curse me. Tell me I'll go to hell, spit saliva and blood on me. You're alive, Crownguard. You can still talk and frown and scream and remind me of how much of a failure I am – I need that, all of that, tonight, if I can be so selfish. I'm already covered in blood and filth, my confidence and faith shattered on the ground, I don't know how much you can hurt me now – but the people, I've got to do something. There's several centuries' worth of records in this temple, records of their history, stories of their past plagues and recipes of their healing formulas and – I need to look through them all. I need to understand why you and I are fine, and the rest of everyone are not. I need to find a way, for that's the only thing I can do – if I fail at that again, I don't think I would ever want to go back home."
Would I want to be alone in this desert of the dead with him? The one who laughed at my blindless – but the same one who's trying to do the same thing I have been trying to do for many, many years? "Where are the books?"
" – Wait. You really don't need to help me. Not after what I said to you, and your injury. Aria said you definitely shouldn't leave your bed – " Ezreal splutters, scrambling to get up. His world is spinning, and she'll have to stand at the center of it, to pivot. There's too much at stake of falling off.
"I'm not going to die," She cuts him off grimly, jumping off the bed and throwing the blanket off behind her, wincing as the crack on her hairline continues to vibrate. "Not tonight, anyway. I'll keep breathing, if just to spite your ugly ass. Now, where's the books? You can use my bed as a table, and I can provide you with some light. You better work all night, or I'll take everything with me and slit my own throat with a small laser."
"No." That determination again, creeping into his voice. She nearly pushes him over in exasperation.
"No?"
"Not before I properly apologize to you first," his hands find her wrists and put them together, forbidding but gentle. "I came here partially to do this, anyway. Aria has said you'll need it, and my eyes can't honestly focus on anything at the moment, regardless, since I spent too long trying to light a flame…"
"What are you doing?" She screeches, backing away from him.
"You need a cold water eye massage," he responds, and whisks her away before she has had a minute to process what that really means.
She sits cross-legged on the bed, counting her kneels before her, a bowl of cold water between them, and the words prince, knight and savior flashes through her mind before she knows what he is.
He's going to try to be a healer, something she can never be.
"You were preparing for this before you went up to talk to the gods. Before I snapped at you." It wasn't a question.
"It's probably better this way. Ages the herbs like wine." There's a heaviness in his voice that weighs almost as much as her darkness, and idly she wonders if the two of them will also die, the last two survivors succumbing to the plague after everyone else has taken their last breath. If I die first, he'll probably try to give me a Demacian funeral, chanting the names of the angels to give me a smoother passing. If he dies first, I don't know if I can scatter his ashes two feet without losing my mind in the cold…
"Don't think about dying." Ezreal's head perks up.
"How do you – "
"I'm thinking about it, too. Trust me, I'm every bit as frightened as you. Still more guilty and upset, though. A little boy asked me before he lost consciousness whether or not he would turn into a planet for the star of his dead grandfather, and it's… it's beautiful of him to imagine that, but I begged with him not to think about it. It's too early. Even if people here can believe in a scintillating afterlife, I can never find dying beautiful."
He's washing the towel again; she dreams of having a family member close enough that she'd want to orbit them forever in death, and stops abruptly, knowing only insanity lies at the end of that road. Why is it always children? Children who suffer – either dying physically, or growing up with a flawed heart only as strong as an ice cube? "Have you ever seen someone die?"
"Three today, remember," he replies tightly. "Please relax. The whole point of this is to help the blood vessels around your eyes to heal. I don't want to stress you out so much that they pop all over again."
That crack on her hairline is still vibrating slightly. "Oh."
A chime of water droplets falling off the towel. "So please trust me. I can't possibly injure your eyes more than they're already injured, and… you know why I'm here. I don't have any reasons to antagonize you, not when every single one of us may not even live to see the next dawn. I was angry because I spent a day running around only to see everything in my nightmares turn true and I was utterly useless to stop any of it from happening… I'm scared of losing some of my best friends, and I want to be able to help someone, anyone. Let me do this for you, Lux. It will make your head feel better, I promise."
I can't hate him. I can tell myself that I should walk up and flip the bowl over, watch him wince as it spills all over his lap, hear him gasp in pain as I throw ice tubes into his eyes, showing him a taste of my darkness. But a part of me refuses to hate him. I guess it's the part of me that believes in light still, the part of me that wants the nice things he's saying to be true. The part of me that tried to save Sera. The part of me that conjured up everything I placed on Ran's tombstone.
"Then talk to me," she says gruffly. "Play make-believe with me. Stop me from shivering when you put the towel on top of my skull. Remind me of the lights, the flowers, all those thriving living things. Make me feel like someone – someone worth loving."
Something falls lightly onto her shoulders; she starts, not used to the smooth feeling of Piltoverian fabric. "But you are worth loving," Ezreal says softly, draping his jacket carefully over her. "You are beautiful. Intelligent. Talented. And on top of that, you care about these people. You can't lie about that to me – not every Demacian general will throw a fit over the fate of a random Shuriman girl or volunteer to stay up all night."
"That's never made me worth loving."
"Now is not never." And then it touches, that moment of cold; it spreads from her left temple, the chill running whole circuit throughout her soul. She nearly sneezes. He squeezes her hand, his gloved fingers and the gauntlet radiating a calm warmth.
"See? It's not bad." And he anoints her on the right temple, too, letting the two waves join together like the lights from the League's twin altars; it hurts like a needle stabbing for almost a second, and then retreats into numbness, a painless paralysis sinking into her skull. She bites down on her lips.
"Don't pass out. If you have to, pass out on me." And then she's not the pivot anymore, not the one helping him stay sane: he's the anchor, the one point of warmth in her world, the one Sun constant in a darkness that keeps spinning. She forces herself to cling onto it, to savor the warmth, to endure this moment. A fleeting memory of her criticizing him for his use of his gauntlet drifts into her mind, but she dismisses it, knowing better: no one can argue methods when they just want to survive.
"I won't pass out on your ugly ass," She croaks, as the darkness slowly settles again. He has pressed down on her forehead, her cheeks, the top of her nose between her eyes, and her mind is clearing into a new clarity, the sounds and smells of the temple chamber turning sharper, the chronic pain fading. "I'll admit you're probably good enough that it won't matter, but I'm still better than that."
A snicker. "Many people would find your stubbornness adorable, too. Jayce's always like that with me. By the Gods of this temple, I really miss him."
The pressure on her hands falls away; she turns in surprise, futilely trying to regain it, appreciating its support and warmth, but Ezreal laughs again, a bit more life in his voice this time. "Sorry, Luxanna. You can lie back down now, if you want. I just might need my hands for the research. If you want my gloves, though – or my gauntlet as some kind of heater – feel free to ask."
"Both. Now." She's sour enough that she doesn't care. "You Pilts have been hiding these fabrics from us."
"About that. I'm terribly, terribly sorry that you got injured out with me – " Ezreal turns back halfway in his path to the bookshelves, his tone apologetic.
"Drop it. That was my fault entirely. I was arrogant, and I wanted glory. I may be stuck in a terrible spot now, but I still have enough honor. Gloves?"
"Can you seriously not return to Demacia, though?" He pleads. "I can – "
"Don't." It's a heartache now, an ache that he can't erase, no matter how hard he may try. Maybe our lives can cross in some form of harmony as we both linger on the edge of death, but after all is said and done, you're still a Piltoverian, and I'm still a Demacian. You may tell me that I'm worth loving – mean it, even – but I can still only be loved where I was born, or living along another orphan. I can't live in Demacia. I can't live in Piltover. Maybe if I'm lucky enough, they'll think I have died a martyr, and I can live on showing rainbows to little girls…
A bitter smile curves up her lips. That thought, though. Another sign I am not a good Demacian. A good Demacian would never even think of cheating the system. A good Demacian, with all the right kinds of honor, would probably already have committed suicide.
"If you're sure, then," The young man gloomily places his gloves in her open palms, his body warmth still lingering on the leather, a quiet, well-meaning wish from the Far North. "If we live through all of this, you'll always be able to find me."
"Why don't we talk about something happier with the little time we have?" She suggests, putting the gloves on with slow, deliberate movements. The warmth is addicting. It tricks me into thinking there's hope still, somewhere, a light in this endless dark, a signal fire to lead me home. "Since you wanted me to sound alive. Or that's what I thought you said."
"I'm sorry." He takes a stack of volumes off the shelves and staggers backwards, nearly collapsing under the sheer weight of the books. "Oof…"
Maybe I'll enjoy this. Enjoy this as I enjoy dark comedy, laughing at the joke that is my continued existence as I drown in my lonely agony. "I've called light to the crystal on my bed. Feel free to start working anytime."
The night drags. In her black world, it's difficult to keep track of time: she can't instinctively feel the world turn beneath her feet, and the entire desert is silent, devoid of even the sounds of people vomiting out the inner linings of their last functional organs. For better or for worse, in the absence of Aria, the tolls of the sole clock in the temple have become death tolls. One, two, three, she recites internally. Three people who died yesterday. One, two, three, four, five: I wonder how many have passed on since the night started, too weak to even whimper as their hearts gave out.
"Why do you think we've been spared?"
"I don't know. Immunity from our extensive world-traveling? Foreign genes? Or maybe we're just gods," Ezreal laughs harshly, moving a stack of read books to the floor. "I wonder if the villagers hate me now. I left them when everything went to hell. I guess – at least I can tell myself – since the plague kills slowly and they're quite into family, none of those who died have died alone."
A shiver went down her spine. "Any progress?"
"This isn't like anything ever recorded – "
"Oh, joy."
" – I'm increasingly convinced that this isn't natural," He finishes, a slight tremble coloring every single word. "Someone's behind this. Well, someone, or something. I don't believe Kiah would have forgotten to mention an impending righteous divine massacre of his people, and the Shuriman gods have never been known for their plagues, anyway. Janna's probably right, someone's laying down the disease through the air, and I'd hate for it to be Aquelis…"
Something in her collapses. Light explodes out of her, light in lasers, light in streaks, light that burns and light that blinds and light that's too many kinds of grief. "…Aquelis?" She whispers, the word spoken so low that she isn't sure she heard herself. No. That's not what happened. That wasn't what he was doing. That was – "The man who killed Aria's husband and blinded me?"
He catches her before she falls, her rays scorching his arms raw. His bare hands are still warm, but what comes out of his lips has only alarm and concern. "Yes, that man. Lux, what's wrong?"
Does everything have to be my fault? Do I have to fail at saving everyone, every single fucking time? I'm tired of losing. I'm sick of paying for my sins. I keep telling myself that there's another way, that next time it will be better, but when all's said and done, it's just another lie. I'll never win. This darkness is my answer, and it will always be my answer.
"Oh, Ezreal," she murmurs, hyperventilating his worried breaths. Strength's rapidly draining away from her as she bathes the entire temple in her loosened power, light shattered into thin lines and roaming raw; she's losing control, losing what little she has left, but she can't help it, just like she can't help anything that has ever happened to her. "It was him. I saw him working it. I didn't know it then, but I do now. It's all my fault. If I had stopped him then – if he didn't win and pluck out my eyes – everyone would still be fine." And she abruptly starts to cry.
Hate. It's an emotion that usually turns people insane, coerces them into hoarding guns and magic before running amok on the streets. It's supposed to turn you into blasting furnaces oblivious to all logic and opposition, killing machines reveling in fire and destruction. Even if it does so in all the wrong ways, hate is supposed to empower. It should make you stronger. Stronger even if it leads to an end in a supernova of annihilation.
I hate myself, she remembers, thrashing against her chains. I hate this world. I hate everything that has ever happened. Everything is dark, and everything is ugly – but at the end of it, I'm the worst thing of it all.
Even my hate can't let me save anything.
"Lux," Ezreal begs, holding her down. There's enough heartbreak in that one word to sustain ten Ezrealian epic songs. His hands are bleeding, the cuts from her savage rays deep enough to sever entire veins; his blood hurts her as it touches her skin, hurts her like the cold water that had killed Sera. "Please don't hurt yourself. It's not your fault."
"But it is." It's too much to bear, now that it's almost dawn and he has told the village of what they know and all the sick are pouring out of their houses, intent on uniting under Ezreal to make a final stand; she wants to scream he's strong and we're not and nothing on my side will win, ever, EVER but she knows there's no way out, she appears batshit insane, and there are too many people who would rather die fighting than resign themselves to a slow, painful passing. She understands them. She wants to be one of them. But it doesn't ever make it any easier to hear them leave.
"Svet-kara," A familiar voice pierces through the poisoned air. She stops. The sobs choke in her throat, and then burst out with a new ferocity. Ezreal yelps as she breaks free of his chains, cries as she sprints into the crowd towards the source of the sound and buries the child under her embrace; there's blood on the little girl's face, now, warm Shuriman blood pouring out and heralding her impending death, and although Lux coos comforting words into the child's ear, she knows that despite all the pain associated with hemorrhage, she wants to keep that blood flowing.
Only a dead heart cannot bleed.
"Let me go, svet-kara," the child sobs, trying to escape her grasp. "It's not your fault. He killed Kinar Kiah first, after all. We're sorry he also took your eyes when you tried to stop him."
"Don't go," she weeps. I don't want you to explode the way my eyes did. I don't want to have to hunt for your pieces in the dark. I don't want you to die. I don't want to lose anymore. "I don't want any of you to die."
"But we don't have any other choice." The child's tears are soaking through. "Those of us who can still fight just – have to."
"I just want to keep you all here with me. Is that so wrong?" She stares up without staring, willing her destroyed face to terrify. Let it be ugly. Let it be the most terrifying thing they had ever seen. Let it scare them, so I can win. "Listen to me. I'm a Demacian general. I'm a champion in the League of Legends, one of the best mages that there ever was, and he took my eyes from me. We can't win. Not today."
"Lux – " Janna sniffles.
"Please. Let me try again. Even like this, I'm stronger than ten of you. Let me go to try to take him down. Let me fight. Let me try to prove my worth for once."
Silence. Blood drips, quiet breaths, wind howling through the desert: she hugs the child tight, praying to all the gods of the sky and all the angels of Demacia and please, whatever god powers I may have if by some miracle I'm actually a god. I just want one miracle, world. One miracle for the entire lifetimes of all these people.
"I have a flower for you, svet-kara," the girl breathes. She stretches up again to reach towards Lux's hair, this time to tie the flower onto Lux's hairband. "I saw it this morning, growing out of the temple floor where you first showed me your rainbow… it's a beautiful desert rose, lovely just like you. Show your rainbows to the world, svet-kara."
It's fading. A blind person's darkness should not be able to ever become darker, but it's gathering shadows, the light sprinting away from her. "You're going to leave."
"My name is Leonor," the child laughs sorrowfully, the last traces of her voice disappearing into the wind as Lux falls into Ezreal's arms, the tranquilizer too strong for the Demacian to handle. "You've done more than enough for me. Just keep that as a namesake… for my memory."
"How many people died last night?"
"Seven, I think."
"Can you pass that vomiting bowl? I think I need a new one."
Those words. She doesn't know what anything means, not anymore. What's life? What makes it worth living? Why even have life when all men must die, and so many die in such ugly and undignified manners, yielding to forces beyond their control?
"Svet-kara?" A dying man calls to her, his voice reverent but close to the end. "Can you show me the rainbow?"
She shows him. He thanks her before passing out. She's walking through a world of the dead.
There's not much she can do, not anymore. She's no healer: even when she had her sight she could not tell two Shuriman herbs apart from each other, and as the villagers waste away, all she can promise them is a beautiful final mirage of light and happiness. I don't know how they even think it's beautiful, she sighs, after the third one. I'm so depressed I think all I'm showing them are skeletons, but I can't see my own work, so I'll never know.
She wonders if her blindness and numbness is helping her tune out the dreadfulness of it all, and has to internally admire Ezreal for lasting through an entire day. Speaking of Ezreal, she frowns, the realization of the pain hitting harder than she expected it to be,
I despair to feel him cold in the dark.
"Lux," Aria moans somewhere from the darkness, those healer's hands still apparently trying to turn a mortar and pestle. "Just find somewhere to rest. Your head… you're a patient, too."
"Listen to Aria," Janna groans. She sounds like she has been crying. I guess Ezreal has been her protégé. A little brother, even. "We'd hate to lose you, too, especially when you don't even have to die."
She walks past them. She finds an empty spot behind a row of houses, several feet of earth that is more perceptive to life than sand, and puts her hands to work, ignoring the throbbing pain that has returned to her head. A crescent moon for the night. A circle for the sun. Several arcs for the clouds and the wind, and all the hearts for a glimmer of hope in the world.
"Let them come back to me," she says to no one in particular. "Let me do something for those who are still around."
She's done a million magic circles in her time, circles to strengthen walls of light, circles to build up a laser that could wipe out an entire division, circles to provide a gigantic shield to the Crown Prince that not even a hundred bullets can break. But this one is different. This one has not been taught to her. This one only has a drop of magic in it. This one is more sincere than any previous ones she has done.
It's a prayer circle.
She sings the Hymn of Light, that one prayer in Demacia that doesn't refer to battle saints or angels or eliminating all evil in Noxus, and her voice breaks, the melody a mix of husky and sobbing and just blind internal shrieking. At some point the lyrics fall away, and she knows she's just repeating one phrase over and over, but it's a phrase she knows well from her last days of paradise before she was forcibly enrolled in the military, a phrase she repeated over and over as a child, hoping something would change, hoping that hope would flash across the sky and turn into an angel to help her survive:
Let us come home.
It's her who holds him this time, her that catches him as he crashes. Something in her quivers as she feels his skin; it's cold, too cold for her comfort, but still warmer than death in her darkness, a pulse still beating under all the damage.
"Ezreal?" Janna screams somewhere in the sea of death. "Oh God. Ezreal. Thank the Gods, you're still alive."
She knows it's not a time to celebrate; it's too quiet, too sad, and he's shaking in her arms, tears streaming down his cheeks and sticking onto her bloodstained sickrobe. "I guess I'm alive, aye. I wish I'm not, though. We injured him – gave him a nasty cut on the head – but he threw us out, killing three of us in the process." He swallows, then struggles to get out of her grasp. "I – I did some things – but I still couldn't – and Lux – "
"You don't need to tell me," She says quietly, restraining him. The emptiness is vast, and as she inhales, the truth is ever more apparent. The world doesn't have a place for me. "Leonor died."
He becomes perfectly still. "I am very, very sorry."
Her crystal is pulsating in her pocket in line with her faltering heartbeat. One purpose now. At least it'll be a good one. "Don't be."
"Ezreal, you've got to do the thing I told you to do. I've been telling you all along." Aria coughs; something falls into the bowl next to her, and Lux has to put a hand up to her head to stop the headache from becoming overwhelming.
His reaction is immediate. "No."
"Once he's done with all of us, he'll come for you. You're a genius, but he's been here his entire life – he'll hunt you down with that absurd boost in magic he has received. Don't die for naught, Ezreal. Take Lux with you. Get out. Let the Institute know of this. Write this into the history books, so it will never happen again."
"I'll send Lux away. I've been planning to do that after she's had a whole night after the massage. I can do that now – but I'm coming back."
"You can't do anything here." Janna implores, the last winds from her caressing the two's cheeks like a caring mother's touch. "Ezreal, I don't want you and Lux to die."
"Lux won't. And my life is my own choice." She remembers his 'never people' from the night before and shivers; he's sitting up and facing the two women now, determined to decide his own destiny. "I'll stay."
"What if Aquelis wants something more? What if he's going to infect the whole desert, the whole world?" Aria growls, putting what little is left of her life into her words. "I thought Kiah taught you better than that, Ezreal. I thought he taught you to value your life. He had always said you are a responsible person."
"I – "
She takes a deep breath. Maybe one day I'll forgive myself.
Maybe I'll be able to, if I pull this off.
He recoils as she takes his hand; she squeezes it, rising up. "You said you were going to get me out?" The last drops of cheerfulness hard-fished out of a trauma-riddled memory. "Then come on, let's go."
In my dream world, there is light. Not just the sunlight that bestows all life, mind you: light that glimmers in all of us, light that nurtures, light that shines. Our souls are made of light, sparkles that make us sing and want to fly. Our smiles are lit up by light, our love laced with dancing spheres of light. We live because the light in us are beautiful. We thrive because the light in us warms our hearts.
In my dream world, no one ever dies.
"But a dream world is only ever a dream," she says, gazing right ahead, her fingers ruffling the velvety petals of Leonor's desert rose. Where there were rolling sand hills and a sky bluer than her eyes, there's only black now, a color that does not belong to pleasant dreams.
He stops the cart, breathing heavily under the scorching sun. Although she has made him wash himself clean and put back on his formal, Piltoverian clothes, he's still immersed in all the shades of misery, his magical steps somehow heavy as Nautilus and his voice raw from crying and screaming commands. He still hasn't slept. Even with his sight, in the last two days, he hasn't seen more light in the world than her. "What?"
"Ezreal. I need to talk to you." It amazes her how calm she is, now, stranded blind in the middle of the desert with a Piltoverian with both everything and nothing to lose. Her soul tingles with a giddiness that charges the entirety of her with electricity, makes her feel like a cocoon of magic about to explode; her head throbs with a pain that is about to go into overdrive, her consciousness barely holding on.
It's because I know my time is running out.
"Don't try to convince me to leave." He's defiant, weary. There's a tone of finality in it all, but she laughs at it, laughs at how it cannot possibly match up to the threads of destiny that are being woven around her. "You weren't there when we confronted him… I did things that you wouldn't believe. I repelled him. Naturally. I was able to make a shield, to heal using my magic… There's something in me that counters his power, and I'm not going to leave if I can help."
"You are going to leave."
"You can't force me." The fear and concern is apparent now; he reaches out, but the hand freezes in mid-air. She's burning; burning both inside and out, light shooting out of her like flaming meteors, the crystal shining like a sun above her heart. "Lux… what are you doing?"
She laughs because she's beautiful now, because she's burning like a star, because this time she has a chance to redeem herself and she's not going to miss it. You are brave. Kind, too. I will admit to myself that I was wrong about you, but I will not admit that to you. Why would it matter? Why would I want to make you cry? My tears are enough. Maybe we can be friends in a different life. "Saying goodbye."
"Lux, WHAT IN THE NAME OF DEMACIA ARE YOU DOING?" He screams, trying to use his magic to extinguish her; she stares right ahead at him, expressionless.
"When I was young, when I was spiteful and suicidal, not finding a place for myself in the world, I read up certain things in the Royal Library. I am a bomb, Ezreal. If I go to Aquelis, even if he kills me, I'll wipe out everything he has ever set up. You don't have to die. Not a single extra person needs to die."
He's crying. "But you will die."
"If you leave, I can end it all. He will perish in light, and I will perish in darkness. There's nowhere for me to go. Would you rather watch Aria die? Janna? All the children in the village?"
Something on her wrists. That warmth, flowing through her, tying her down to the world again. How? With all the light, with all the programming, I'm actually burning. And my head – I don't think I can – "LET ME GO! YOU'RE GOING TO BURN YOUR HAND!"
"I don't care." And then his grip is tighter, the unnatural warmth from him colliding with the heat that is turning her into a diamond, a bond that refuses to let go. "If you're going to go, you'll have to take me with you."
"Ezreal." She gasps to breathe in the inferno, and then she knows he's in it, tied to it, burning along with her, his face inches away from hers. No. Don't do this to me. Don't even deny me the chance to die. "EZREAL, STOP IT! it's just you and me. THIS MIGHT AS WELL BE THE LIVING WORLD. Just you and me. You're the only person left, the only one still in the light, the only one who can still cry, the only one still smiling at me, although I can't even see... and I'm asking you now, begging you, Ezreal, JUST LEAVE!"
"You're going to blow up in around 10 minutes," he comments, his voice drowning in the flames. "BUT IF THERE'S SOMETHING I KNOW, SOMETHING I LEARNED AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, SOMETHING AFTER ALL THESE DEATHS – IT'S THAT I CAN'T LET ANYONE DIE ALONE!"
She's made of corona and electric plasma, a tiny sun flaring a supernova right above the ground, melting from the inside because she has to, to save everyone for the people that she couldn't save; he's a ball of fire and glistening gold, his hands never letting go, his heart a shield blocking out all the heat that threatens to consume them whole. They're falling down a sand dune and her consciousness is fading, the pain and heat finally gaining ground and sweeping her sanity away; he pushes back against her, willing the fire to die out, willing the light to retreat back into her and keep her alive –
And she sees him, his face scarred with bruises and tearstains, his blue eyes willing to stop at nothing to pull her back, his chest glittering gold with a light she had never seen –
And he hugs her, forcing his body to drown out to flames, forcing her to turn away from death, to see light as it really is supposed to be –
And the world explodes in a shower of rainbow and gold, the sound piercing through the domineering silence of death, the light bright enough for all of Valoran.