A/N

THIS IS THE LAST PART BEFORE WE GET TO DEMACIA PROPER, I PROMISE. (AS YOU WILL SOON SEE, A LOT OF THE CHAPTER IS DREAMING ABOUT DEMACIA ANYWAYS.) Kassadin is being delayed to the next chapter, but I do owe him words since he's one of the four major characters, so he will definitely show up. Same goes for the Demacian lady we met a few chapters ago.

This interlude doesn't do much for the plot, but it does lead into the Demacia Arc proper, which is going to be as heavy on love and politics as the Shurima Arc is heavy on death. And before you get really, really confused, just let me clear this up: both Lux and Ezreal have godlike powers, although Lux doesn't think hers are her own (aka hers are given by the "Angel") and Ezreal actively denies his. Yes, that will lead to very, very messy things in Demacia, including eventually a fully trashed Hall of Mirrors.

Thank you, thank you and thank you for sticking around for so long and reading all of this. I appreciate all of you more than you would ever know. You all are quite literally (lol) keeping me from falling into despair over both writing and life itself. I commissioned Shinaa (you can find her on both Deviantart and Tumblr) for a short comic on a scene in Chapter 7; you will be able to find a link to the picture on the updated A/N for Chapter 7.

As per usual, if you read vOceanic or Toast (askfrostedezreal on tumblr)'s work, you'll find my work littered with references to theirs. If you find my work interesting, please do yourself a favor and check out theirs as well, for they are much, much better than I could ever hope to be. Throw Annie and Glaive into the mix as well for all of my love; I will never understand why you guys keep humoring me.

Stay hopeful. I want to become an Angel for your hearts.

Journalist: So Ezreal, have you ever been in love?

Ezreal: No.

Journalist: Many in Piltover would consider Caitlyn and you an attractive couple. Or you and Janna. Even you and Jayce. Thousands of words have been written about you and Vi, and there have been six comics of you with Orianna –

Ezreal: Let me correct myself. Yes.

Journalist: Ooooh. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you've never written about being in love with anyone, have you?

Ezreal: That would be correct.

Journalist: May we, perhaps, get a confession –?

Ezreal: Love is love. It happens. I'm constantly in love, that's how I live. What would life be without love? I love exploring. I love danger. I love the first –

Journalist: We were talking about the other –

Ezreal: I dare you. I dare you to make me fall in love with you. Do you hear me, Piltover? Do you hear me, Valoran? Teach me how to love.

Journalist: Ezreal –

Ezreal: You know I can and will make it immortal.

-"Interview your own League Champion", Piltover, two years ago

"Believers, look up – take courage. The angels are nearer than you think."

-William Graham (43), preaching in the Hall of Heaven, Demacia

"Live as if you will die today. Dream as if you will live forever."

-James Dean (20), legendary Piltoverian actor and cultural icon

O'er thee, like thine own sea birds/ I'll circle without rest/For me earth holds no corner/To build a lasting nest.

-Elisabeth Amalie (32), late Queen of Demacia, great-grandmother of Luxanna Crownguard

He is the first to excuse himself from the dinner table.

"Are you alright?" Lux asks worriedly as he stands up, one hand on the wall to keep his balance. "You didn't even finish half of your food."

He didn't. Although he had thought that some food would make him feel better, the act of eating has reminded him of all those who could no longer chew. His lips are cracked and dry; his heart is tired to the sinew, as much a desert as the dunes barely inside his view. "I don't really have an appetite."

There was more sadness in his words than he expected. Lux haltingly raises a hand, seemingly considering giving him a pat on the shoulder, but eventually thinks better of it, returning to her own food. Her voice, though, remains sympathetic. "You should really eat some more. We haven't really eaten a proper meal since that day in Barliman's."

"I can't keep anything down. Feel nauseous." He's turned to leaning on Aria's bed, and he can acutely feel the chill of the metal frame, the cold current clashing against something hot and dizzy in his brain. "I'm sorry – can I go lie down somewhere? I probably just need some sleep." A sheepish look in Lux's direction. "Not everyone is a goddess."

She glares at him. "For the hundredth time, I'm not a goddess."

"Just letting you know I still have the spirits to mess with you." Janna coughs suggestively; he winks at the older woman, then at Aria. A wince follows the wink; even the muscles on his face are completely exhausted. "Aria – do you know –?"

"Most beds haven't been cleaned up," the Shuriman responds tiredly, putting down her bowl on the table and rubbing her temple with one hand. "I know it's over, but dirty sheets probably won't help you sleep."

He grimaces. No vomit. I've played enough healer for a lifetime. "I can sleep on a rock. Is there anywhere that's clean?"

"Well, there is the bed that I used, in the temple –" Lux starts haltingly, hiding her face behind her food.

Oh gods no. "A rock. Just give me a rock."

"I'll give you the keys to Leonor's place," Aria sighs, standing up. Lux tenses; he can feel the prickling sound of her suppressed emotions at the back of his head, a distant storm fuzzing like static, but she relaxes, apparently deciding that he won't defile the little girl's memory. I'll have to seriously think about the mental repercussions of these unintentional mind-listening episodes. "I don't think she went back home."

"Is that appropriate? I don't want to be disrespectful." She'll be beautiful in the night sky. A nebula, perhaps. Like the rosy one Jayce showed me back home, the most recent returns from Heimer's inventions.

"She wouldn't have minded. She wanted to show you her room, a number of times. She takes all the newspapers, and folds them into cranes –"

He twitches at the same time Lux does. "Give me a cart. I'll go wheel myself into the desert somewhere."

Aria sighs again, for a second looking like his old techmaturgy professor from more than a decade ago. Grief is more repulsive than blood and filth, he thinks, staring dazedly into the distance. Death doesn't haunt us. Memories do. "They're burning the dead outside the West Gate. Head east. Take some of Kiah's warmer clothes. If you look around a little, you might be able to find a clean pillow, too."

He throws himself down onto the sand a couple hundred steps outside of the village gate, under a short mesquite tree. The sand's abrasive against his neck and hard to shake out from the cloth fabric, but he doesn't care, rolling around on the ground for a few moments before coming to a stop and spreading his limbs wide apart on the Earth: nature feels good. Right. Safe. Even if there's danger from exposure and desert animals, at least he'd know it's his fault for not having prepared beforehand. Nature's not evil. It just lives. Stubborn. Like all life. Like us.

"Nature is good to me," he mumbles feebly, splashing around in Kiah's old clothes. A hand takes out a sheet of leather from a backpack and starts unrolling it, as the other secures the spare pair of goggles over his eyes.

When was the last time he needed a new pair of goggles? A few years ago? Jayce had made them to be size adjustable, allowing him to use the same pair as he grew. At least the goggles are not all that complicated to make. The gauntlet, on the other hand…

"Ugh," he groans, sliding the sheet under him and reaching for the pillow. "Jayce is going to have a field day –"

Can I still use a gauntlet? Do I need one?

The thought made him become absolutely still. The right hand pauses in its search for the pillow. The left hand is raised to eyelevel, examined, the round scar softly traced –

A shower of golden sparks shoot off into the air, dissolving into small, delicate shapes. Paper cranes.

"Fuck."

Both answers are negative.

He sleeps uneasily, dreaming haphazard dreams, nightmares with wings that simply refuse to diffuse. He sees Jayce unconscious in his fever, Lux's ruined face bleeding, the aftermath of fatal stampedes at Bandle City; something under him burns, a thousand thorns tickling.

All the things I don't want to remember or accept, right?

A pause, and then his own voice talking back at him: what things?

That I should have stayed behind for Jayce. That I'm really awful at helping people. That this world is fucking awful, and as time goes on, is only making less and less sense.

A small chuckle; the voice now resembles the one he used to talk to Lux as an angel. Do you need an Angel, too?

For what?

Still that same amused voice. Don't we all need an angel? To tell ourselves that there's still hope in this world, and light is worth fighting for?

Oh, there's always something worth living for and fighting for. If I'm not so afraid, I'd probably – I would save the world with my own hands. If I wasn't so terrified of hurting people around me, I would save everything. Every leaf, every flower, every stem and limb and gill and human being – we will all live, if just because I say we will.

The voice is laughing openly now, a beautiful sound like chimes in the wind. You really do sound like a Demacian god, you know that, right?

I'm just sick of death and loss.

The angel-voice sobers. You don't consider life and death to all just belong to one giant wheel?

No. No. And it's not because it's unappealing. It's just because – I'd rather everything be one giant fishing line thrown out towards the hole at the bottom of the universe. I'd always be waiting for the catch.

The angel-voice is fading away. So, one final question: what do you really want?

I want wonder-based faith. A split-second hesitation. We will make it. I promise.

(I want to be an Angel of the heart.)

One.

Golden spires and golden wings, so: Demacia. A ring divides the city and the country: the exosphere is made of clay, and the core of the nation, marble.

He stands right outside the Gate of the Palace, inhaling myrrh and several millennia's worth of grandeur, showering in the blessing of battle saints and guardian angels carved into stone.

Two miles away, near the bay, a new monument is being built; twenty miles off, under the mountain, peasants languish under the sun, praying to gods and kings they've never seen.

He knows he's always been wary of Demacia. The prosperity alienates me because it's undeserved glory for the few. The poverty sickens me because it's undeserved sadness for so many.

But; it's her home.

Would I do what so many have done in the name of love, abandon one's freedom for a lady's smile?

Two fists clench almost involuntarily. What would I become then, a romantic crusader?

He's hurrying through streets, admiring the various shop signs drawn on red wood in gold, flying arches and dragon skins. There are calligraphers here, artists and performers for the crown, tea merchants and saddle-makers, sellers of wines worth entire peasant families; it's the well-dressed nobles traversing through the shops and the King's Guard standing warily outside the Gates, though, that give him pause, and he crouches down, observing their behavior, very much a historian and sociologist in his natural habitat.

Lux…

She's a goddess; he knows it now, believes it as much as he believes Piltover is to the north of Noxus and rivers flow from mountains to the sea. She's a reincarnation of the Aurora, although also her own person, someone destined for only the greatest things –

You want to come back here, but why?

Why return to a place that has given you so much loneliness, and even more pain?

He remembers now, the way they both stood at the village gate; she had looked like a goddess of war with all intention of wiping out an entire race, and he had stared down onto the ground, an unwilling god in agonizing pretense.

A young Demacian noble girl bows in courtesy to a general; the general makes a comment to make the girl flinch before riding off with a train of cavalry soldiers, a train of dust blasted up by white hooves –

Hahahaha. It's probably for the same reason that you love her. She's coming back because she will never run away or give up.

If she doesn't like her country, she'll fix it, make a new home.

"Braver than me," he murmurs, a longing ache in his chest that has been building up for years. "Braver than simply running away and hoping a miraculous answer is just behind the next sunrise."

How does it feel like, being in love?

He looks up. There are angel statues here, tiny cherubs on the roofs of buildings, little wing symbols that line the streets. "That I want to be with her, I suppose. That I wish she'd smile at me, hug me, kiss me, love me back, although she's probably destined for someone greater than I'd ever be."

That she wouldn't hate me, when she inevitably finds out the truth.

"I don't want to go, you know. But I know she's going to change the world and… I want to look out for her, as much as she'd yell at me for it. She needs the Angel, if not me."

The King. The recruit system in the Demacian military. The torture Lux suffered at the hands of the senior officers as a child, law and morality ripping apart entire families. He sees it now, all the things that Lux would want to – need to – challenge; there would be blades behind the scenes, cold eyes without mercy, a King that cares more about his position than the welfare and happiness of his people. It's easy to exterminate a corrupted Shuriman shaman you've never known, but how would she fare if she has to fight her old friends or older brother?

I want to look out for those daggers in the dark.

He recalls the words he said, many years ago, at an interview: You know I can and will make love immortal.

A smirk. A small cloud of golden static in his hands, hot as the heart of the sun.

Demacia?

If you want to get her, I dare you to get through me.

Two.

He had grown up opposite a mural on Piltover's walls, something scribbled by a graffiti artist in the dark of the night:

Open Your Eyes

I See the Sunrise

So that's what he did: dream. Chase. Love. Hope. All the paper umbrellas, all the sweets, every line on forgotten Freljordian myths. He had climbed Mount Targon at midnight, sang for the mermaids under the moon, and documented the life and death of the last Rafflesia arnoldii in the Kumungu Jungle. He had tried to spread the sunlight to the people, the plants, and the animals swimming in the seas. He had felt wonder stir inside his chest, love swelling like Ionian spring rain, a pride for this world singing in his heart as he wrote and drew furiously in his notebooks.

But he hadn't done it like this, never in all of his twenty-something years.

He holds a fistful of Shuriman sand in his hands and it crumbles and grows, grainy gold turning into wet darkness as a sprout pokes its head out from the earth, sparkling with fresh dew. Salamanders and camels gather around him as if to give him tribute, intelligent eyes turned up towards him as if he was the Earth itself, that mysterious force that kept the oases alive with water and the sun's rays from annihilating all; beneath him and above him the sky and the ground seem to shiver in awe, a golden essence flux spreading out for miles, an indescribable power collecting in his blood.

He hesitates; not sure how to take in all of it, but immensely proud; an owl lands in front of his eyes, and he can hear its thoughts, clear as the day he dreamed of Lux's past, its meaning without doubt.

Fly with us, Explorer.

So he sprints onto the top of the sand dune and leaps off: he's a falcon, a predator with a fierce temper and even fiercer love, a living thing that nearly ceases appearing real when it pierces through the sky, gaining speed, beating the dawn. The entire desert spreads out underneath him, magnificent and old, ever home to people of the stars, ever producing those that endure and survive under the sun, never to fall –

He descends and nearly crashes just in time to meet the Kumungu jungle, antlers sticking out: he's a stag, a spirit that simply knows without having to ask how, something that has seen entire human kingdoms rise and fall, encountered many a hunter only to count his skull. He's taller than the foliage but not taller than the scent of death and rebirth, standing still next to a stream only to see it all –

The stag descends into the water but it's a much smaller being that rises, lithe and intimate, scurrying about: he's a squirrel, an observer that would rather watch than bow, a little cloud of energy that is omnipresent and omnipotent, in sun or squall. Even as only a furry ball he has managed to scale the walls of both Demacia and Noxus, collected intrigue from Queen Ashe and Teemo the Scout –

"Is this a dream?" He whispers as a human, standing on top of Jayce's lab with binoculars in his hands, both frightened and enthralled. "Am I really all of those things, maybe the Earth itself?"

If Lux is a goddess, is it hard to think you could be one as well?

"Gods don't hesitate. Gods don't have flaws."

You're lying through your teeth on that one. And don't even the greatest angels fall?

"It doesn't matter what I am. It just matters that I make some kind of use for it."

Is that truly all?

He wakes up with a start, gasping for breath as the Shuriman wind blasts him right on the face, the pieces of leather falling off: he stops and stares at himself, from the number of fingers on his hands to the shape of his legs and stomach. Human. All of that were a lie and a dream, after all.

It's only when he has stood up that he realized his fist has been clenched the entire time. He had been holding a feather, a long, white one from a falcon or an angel, sharp and smug.