Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Isha?”

It tumbles from my lips.

I don’t know why I know, or how, but it must be.

It can’t be – but it can only be, because Jinx’s eyes are wide and flooded with her Shimmer-gleaming tears, because Jinx clings to this child like she’s the anchor of her universe –

Because this child, this tiny, ragged child, has just leapt into the face of a greater Murkwolf for Jinx with only a stick, her bare hands, and her teeth.

From what she told me of her daughter, it’s got to be her.

But she should be ashes and dust.

The clearing around the bothy is nearly silent. The pack of Murkwolves is gone, the wolf I killed with my sword lies nearby, and my Final Spark has left little behind of the leader. Starfire snorts in the little barn, agitated by the smells and sounds, but not panicking.

Outside, only we three remain; me, Jinx and the little girl.

Jinx’s hands are shaking as she squeezes and squishes the girl and scruffs at her messy mop of blue-tipped brown hair.

When I speak, she glances up to me, and it’s wide-eyed, wild-eyed, begging me for confirmation.

The girl looks over her shoulder back at me. She’s scruffy and malnourished, covered in dirt and scratches, but her big golden-amber eyes scan me over, quick, intelligent – and wary.

Jinx doesn’t seem to notice. She’s still blubbering and fussing over the child, and I can’t blame her one bit.

If anything she told me was true, then this development is not just unexpected, it’s miraculous.

“B-Blondie…” she gulps, “Y-you can – you can see her? You can see her¸right?”

Her eyes well up with tears again. Her white face is desperately tangled in all its feelings, and she’s shaking head to toe. I can nearly hear her thin knees rattling.

“Tell me, tell me you can, please…”

“I can. I can see her, Jinx.”

“She’s real,” Jinx whispers, her face twisting between a grimace of grief and the world’s softest, purest smile. She pulls Isha back around to face her and cups her cheeks, beaming through her tears, “You’re real…?”

Isha peers at her, then wriggles away and lifts two fingers to her temple in a kind of salute.

Jinx sucks in a breath.

Isha swings that hand down and thrusts it toward Jinx –

Jinx, without looking, snaps her own out in answer, and their fingertips collide, tap each other, smack their wrists together, and then draw back into finger-guns, with each girl uttering a ‘pschhheww!’ as the handshake completes.

Jinx stares at her in awe and delight, and a cracked, wild laugh of joy bubbles up in her chest.

The girl grins, pounces, and hugs Jinx, and for a long moment there’s only that, and all I can do is stand and feel the smile on my face and let what’s in my chest tangle up inside me.

I can’t put a name to what I’m feeling, witnessing this impossible reunion. I feel like I’ve taken an arrow to the heart, and I don’t know why.

I should feel only joy. But it hurts, too. There’s loss, too, and I’m the one losing something, and I can’t explain it.

Then the girl – Isha, it must be – pulls back from Jinx, glances at me again with that same suspicious look, and makes a quick gesture with her hands.

Jinx looks at her, gives a sob-laugh, says, “Relax, kiddo,” and makes a practiced gesture back, fluid and precise.

I don’t quite catch the meaning of either movement, but the intent and the implication aren’t unfamiliar things to me.

I’m an Illuminator, a branch of the Protector’s temple focused on works of charity (well, and a little light espionage). I’ve worked among the most disadvantaged people in Demacia, and it’s not only mages that my Terbisia has taken in, either.

I smile at them both, and lean down a bit, hands on my knees, “What did she say?”

Jinx chuckles. Her eyes flick away from mine briefly as she shrugs, with her sly smirk.

“…she asked who the pretty sunshine lady is.”

My brows furrow, an idea kindling, and I kneel until I’m at Isha’s eye level.

There are two sign-languages in Demacia; one used by the Illuminators to communicate with those who cannot speak, hear, or both, and one used by the Rangers for silent communication on stealth missions in the field. The two aren’t unrelated, and I’m trained in both.

I give her my very kindest smile. It’s not hard to, right now. I don’t even have to try.

I lift my hands and sign, thank you for your kind words. I’m so happy to meet you. I’m a friend of your mom. My name is Lux.

The girl blinks at me, stares at Jinx, and stares back at me.

Jinx snickers and snorts.

“She thinks you sign funny.”

I give Jinx a deadpan glare. “She didn’t sign anything.”

“She didn’t have to, Flashlight.”

I roll my eyes slightly and sign, I’m from – and I gesture to the countryside around me – “Demacia,” – my sign is different to yours. I’m sorry if it’s difficult to understand.

Isha’s still looking at me with that canny, judging look.

Her lips purse and she narrows her eyes, then turns and signs something quickly – fists up, dropping her wrists, rapping her fist to her chest, tapping her hands together with two fingers extended - to Jinx.

That one’s a little similar to the Demacian sign, just enough for me to read-

“…d-did she just sign can we keep her?” I ask Jinx, blinking, a little heat on my cheeks.

“What? Noooo…” Jinx scoffs, “Pfff, no, Blondie, get your eyes checked.”

And then she winks at me, and Isha is looking very self-satisfied like a little golden-eyed cat, and I’m clearing my throat and shaking my head.

There’s a faint, hopeful little edge to Jinx’s coy smirk. A softness, falling away.

My smile answers her and my eyes turn to her daughter.

Thank you Isha, I sign, I’d like that very much.

Isha tweaks a little grudging smile. She picks up her Demacian helmet and plops it back on. It’s big enough on her that you can still see her face peeking out of the faceguard.

Jinx watches the exchange with curiosity and trepidation. She’s still shaking a little, but the surreally mundane conversation between Isha and I seems to have had an effect – it’s calmed her down a lot.

“You…know how to sign, Blondie?” Jinx squints at me, “I – how – I mean you’re signin’ real weird but – I – my dad taught me how – he said us Zaunites made it up down in the mines, when you needed to communicate but couldn’t talk through your masks or breathe the air-”

She shakes her head.

“How the heck do you know it?”

A little laugh spills out of me, “I don’t, Jinx. I’m using Demacian sign,” that’s why it’s weird, I sign, it’s a different language, “…Ours was developed after the Rune Wars. There were so many refugees coming into Demacia with terrible injuries, both of body and mind. The Order of Illuminators that I belong to helped to keep it in use, over the centuries.”

“Huh,” Jinx widens her eyes, “Then how come there’s some stuff that’s the same?”

A musing frown crosses my lips, “It may be that one is based, in part, on the other, or that we each picked up some signs from the other through travelers and traders. Zaun would have been part of Shurima back then, I think? And the refugees who founded Demacia came from all over the world.”

I can feel the lightness, the giddiness in my chest as I broach the topic – it’s something I’m passionate about – I can almost smell the books I’ve read on the subject, almost hear the dry voices of the scholars and tutors whose ears I’ve chewed off with question after question after question…

“…language is organic like that, you know? Even places as far away as Zaun and Demacia still had communication, even throughout all those dark periods of history. We’re all connected in our own way, no matter how far apart we are-”

A beaming smile crosses my face and it’s everything I can do not to go on one of my rambles – as Garen would put it – letting Little Page-Duster out.

I can’t help it. History, culture, sciences, art…the world is so beautiful, and there’s so much to learn, is it wrong of me to want to share the knowledge I’ve worked hard to glean with others…?

But there’s a time and a place. Now isn’t it. I think I even saw a pang of something painful cross Jinx’s face when I said connected in our own way and no matter how far apart…

It passes quickly; Jinx distracts herself playing with Isha’s mud-and-twig-caked hair, only glancing up to stare at me with a mix of wonder and confusion.

“Wow,” she mutters, “You’re a big freakin’ nerd, Sunbeam.”

I blink at her, and she bursts out laughing, leans in, and bumps Isha with her elbow as she whispers something to her. She never breaks her unblinking eye contact with me over the kid’s head.

Her grin widens, but there’s something sparking in her eyes.

“I like it.”

And now I’m blushing again.

Isha’s looking at me, her big golden eyes flickering between myself and her mother, still appraising me.

She doesn’t have to say or sign it. I’m a stranger spending time with her mother. Getting close to her mother. She doesn’t trust me; she doesn’t know if I’m friend or foe, yet. If I’m going to hurt Jinx or try to take Jinx away from her.

It’s probably why she didn’t come close, until now.

I wonder how long she was…watching us? The heat just won’t leave my cheeks, and I have to shake it away.

Oh dear.

She signs again, and I’ve got about a third of it, maybe, by implication and facial expression, when Jinx confirms.

“She said she’ll teach you our sign, if you wanna teach her yours.”

Thank you, Isha, I sign back to her, I’m really excited to learn from you. I can’t wait!

She grins, bounces her helmed head, and darts away to pick up her discarded walking stick.

My head turns to follow her, and I’m biting my lip in thought.

“Jinx, does Isha hear? Or does she only not talk?”

Jinx takes a moment like that, frowning, and shrugs.

“Never needed to think about it,” she admits, “I guess she reacts to noises and stuff, but I never actually asked her. We got each other right away, so it never came up.”

I nod, lips pursed, as Isha darts back over to us, giving Jinx a salute that wobbles the oversized helmet on her head.

“Isha, can you hear me, if I speak?” I ask her, without signing.

Isha nods. She is watching my lips a little, and it makes it hard to be sure, but I’m willing to take what she’s told me at face value.

“Your name’s Isha,” I tip my head, crinkling my eyes a little at her, “That means ‘Protector’ in a very old language, is that right?”

The child looks surprised, but I can’t tell whether she didn’t know that, or she’s just surprised that I do.

She signs back to me and this time, as foreign as the sign is by Demacian standards, I can get the gist.

Yours means ‘light’?

A big grin crosses my face, and I give a firm nod.

I look up at Jinx and make eye contact with her.

There’s a fear in her eyes. A question she wants to ask. She has to ask. But she’s so scared; scared if she asks, she’ll wake up from the dream.

It’ll all prove to be an illusion, and Isha will disappear.

I’d do anything to take that fear from her.

“Isha,” I say and sign at the same time, “If I’m a Light, and you’re a Protector.”

I lean a little closer to her, and give her a wink, conspiratorial.

“Maybe we can work together to be those things for your mom? How does that sound?”

Jinx gives me a funny look at ‘mom’ but Isha brightens immediately. She gives a nod, the oversize Demacian helmet bobbing on her head, spits on and thrusts out her hand.

I eye her a moment, let her think I’m going to be grossed out. Then I spit on my hand and shake hers with a grin.

It’s only when I look away from Isha that the look on Jinx’s face strikes me to my core.

The softness, the warmth, it’s all fled her. She’s staring at Isha, and then at me.

We each want to live up to our names for her, I realize, with a sharp pang, but for us…

She’d give anything to avoid living up to hers.

Her eyes say it all. Jinx swallows, shakes it away, and slips close to Isha, kneeling opposite me.

“Isha,” she says, with a touch to the girl’s shoulder, and looks straight in her eyes, “How…”

She swallows again, and forces the question out of herself.

“How are you here?” she whispers, “How are you alive?”

Isha pauses.

And all I can think of are those markings on her temples and cheeks – now hidden by the Demacian helmet.

Isha’s face falls a little, her eyes flicking around the ground. Then she looks back at Jinx, gives a strange, distant little smile, and signs something back to her.

I’m frowning – I missed it, too focused on Jinx’s reaction.

Her eyes narrow sharply, then widen, then narrow again. She makes a little ‘chh’ in the back of her mouth, at first like she’s about to scoff, then, like she’s tasted something sour.

“That’s not…” is all she says, furiously shaking her head as if she were ridding herself of a stinging insect, her bang whipping back and forth, “That’s just…”

I open my mouth to ask, but Jinx is leaping to her feet, hiding a little growl, and turning a smile on to the little girl.

“C’mon, Scrunglebean,” she says, rapping her metal knuckle on the top of Isha’s helmet like a drum, “We gotta get you cleaned up. You stink like a thousand polecats.”

Isha scowls at her.

“…well, polecats and motor oil!” Jinx giggles, “That’s my nugget. Just like I taught ya!”

It’s not the question I want to ask, but I can tell Jinx won’t answer if I try, so my mouth shifts to – “Motor oil…?”

“Yup, good for maskin’ scent,” Jinx bobs her head,  “Anywhere there’s lots of metal n’ machines. Like, y’know, most of Zaun? Or, say, a Piltie airship engine room, where this little gremlin must’ve been hidin’ while I was in the cargo hold…”

Isha gives a sly, smug grin and crosses her arms. She bounces her head in a nod once.

“Very clever, just like Jinx,” I grin at the two of them, “But you’re out in the Demacian wilderness, now, so that scent’s hardly going to blend in with trees and rocks and rain, is it?”

Isha thinks for a moment, then scowls.

Water too cold, she’s signing, but it’s too late – Jinx has collared her.

“Nuh uh. You’re comin’ with me, boogerface,” Jinx has a wicked grin on her face, “And we’re gonna get you scrubbed up good…so stop kickin’ and come get unstinky!”

Isha whines and growls, wriggling in Jinx’s arms like a feral cat being taken for a bath, but Jinx holds her steady.

“I’ll get the fire started,” I offer, and turn away, frowning, staring over at the bothy.

We only brought enough supplies for two…

“When you’re all shiny,” Jinx suggests to Isha, narrowing her eyes, “Sunbeam here is gonna have a yummo dinner all ready just for us, got it?”

And she’s pointing with a wink, at the body of the wolf I killed with my sword.

“Jinx,” I frown, “That’s a wolf.”

“And…? It’s free meat, now.”

“It’s an apex carnivore,” I protest, “It could have diseases, parasites – it won’t be safe to eat unless it’s prepared and cooked very carefully-”

Jinx laughs, “We’re Lanes brats, y’think we didn’t grow up on extremely questionable meat? Healthy looking beastie like that’s got nothin’ on the poor scraps we’ve had to gnaw on over the years. Trenchers like us got cast iron guts, we’ll be fine. Besides, you’ll cook it right, right?”

She winks.

“Just apply fire! Like that time ya tried to cook and burned down that whole castle!”

“Almost burned down,” I’m grumbling, but the wide eyes and then cracking smile on Isha’s face as she’s clearly imagining me burning down a whole castle makes my lips tweak in a little smile.

Isha’s signing again, something about … maybe ‘sun’ and ‘through’, or ‘passing’. I’m not sure, the language barrier has raised its head again.

“Pfff, Isha says, just bake it through with your shiny,” Jinx shrugs, “She’s right, y’know. You’re full of shiny flashy boom. Just give it a good ol’ roastin’ that way, cauterize all the bad stuff out. Easy.”

My mouth falls open, my brows furrow.

Well it’s not like I haven’t experimented, privately, with cooking things with my Light before…

“Hear that, Isha?” Jinx winks at the kid, “You hurry up and get clean for me, we might even make it back in time for the forest fire Lux is about to start! Orroight, c’mon…”

And she’s hauling off a very grumpy, but also very excited-looking Isha, down the path toward the waterhole.

“Keep it hot, Blondie.”

She winks over her shoulder.

Along the way, she picks up her lost gun. Doesn’t even look at it as she twirls and slips it in her holster. No hesitation, now.

But I didn’t miss the look on her face as she looked back at me. Just after that wink. She’s putting on a good smile. For Isha. But this, all of this, has shaken her to the core.

They’ve got a lot to talk about.

Blowing out a breath as they round the corner, I turn to the dead wolf.

“Well.”

Between my sword and the small dagger at my other hip, the grisly work can be done.

“Sorry, pup. Bet you didn’t think I’d end up eating you when you tried to eat me.”

I draw steel with a sigh.

“I guess we’re doing this.”

There’s roast murkwolf on the fire and three shadows gathered around as the darkness of Demacia closes in.

I’d almost finished skinning and preparing the wolf meat for cooking when Jinx returned with a very soggy and shivery, but clean Isha in tow. My turn, then, to brave the pool alone and wash the blood and the smell of dead animal from my hands and implements.

Jinx is happy to do the rest.

When I rejoin them after checking in on Starfire, Jinx has already pulled some spare parts out of the massive contraption she carries with her, rigged them into some kind of handheld gizmo she’s using to sear the meat, and turned some of the metal plating into a makeshift face plate to shield Isha’s eyes. A pair of bolt-eyed goggles cover her own.

She’s clearly glazed the meat with more of those Zaunite spices. It’s wreathed in a vaguely spectral aura of pinkish flame, and smells strongly of something like a mix of paprika and burning sugar.

Her tongue pokes out as she points to the food. She leans back to regard her work with great satisfaction. She chatters to her child, and I hear for the first real time the quiet delight of Isha’s laugh.

There’s a warmth in my heart, seeing them together, the easy, natural affection. I hear the warm huskiness in Jinx’s voice, the way its pitch alters when she shifts into some quirky, bizarre jest for Isha’s benefit.

Mother and daughter, they must surely be. But seeing them together – there’s little of distance and authority dividing them, and much of the comfortable jostling, jovial manner of sisters and of friends.

I wonder what it would’ve been like. To have that with my own mother…

Every now and then, Jinx looks up at me, and her eyes blaze with a giddy joy, almost drunk with happiness, mixed with wonder, bafflement, and trepidation.

Like she’s looking to me for confirmation. That Isha is real. That I’m real. That this is real.

Like she’s going to look away for a moment and Isha will be gone.

My footsteps slow.

Somehow, coming into the circle of the firelight feels like an intrusion. Again, I can’t quite quell the feeling that I’m losing something, every passing moment.

Something I didn’t know I had.

My eyes close, for just a moment, but when they open again, Jinx is watching me.

She’s noticed, but the little furrow of her brows indicates she doesn’t know what to make of it.

Neither do I, to be honest, so I can’t really explain myself. I can only give her a smile and push myself over that intangible line – into the circle, into their warmth, and the fire’s.

My hands are cold and damp from the stream.

I know Isha’s already seen my Light, and the fire would make short work of the wet on my hands and sleeves, but this might be an opportunity for a small test.

“Brrr, cold out there,” I pull up beside Isha, a little distance, and let my hands rest on my knees. Concentrating, for but a moment, breathing with the moment, with the air – with the light of the fire –

My hands start to glow, the sheen of my Light captured, refracted, by the tiny droplets of moisture steaming away from my skin and rising into the air.

From the corner of my eye, I can see the little girl’s eyes widen in curiosity and awe.

No fear, not even after a light of the Arcane seemed to have claimed her life…

Not a moment of fear.

It hits me hard, like an unexpected punch to the chest. I can’t help but think of the terror of every Demacian child for generations at the thought of inexplicable power rising from a person’s hands, from a person’s mind, the hated and accursed Affliction…

That terror had once been mine, to see, to feel, this selfsame light, from my own selfsame hands.

I wasn’t so much older than Isha.

I give her a sidelong, playful wink, as if she’s just borne witness to a special secret. I even lift my glowing fingertip to my lips.

Her hair’s still a bit damp, too.

Want to come try? I sign to her, and gesture to her wet hair; she gives a little wide-eyed gasp, looks to Jinx for approval, and is given a sly nod.

Soon she’s scurrying over, plopped on the ground in front of me, poised with her head pushed up between my hands and a curious, somewhat suspicious look at the glow.

I give her my most serene expression as I reach within, let Light become gentle heat, and let it lift the droplets from her shaggy mop and away into the air.

“Magic can be powerful, scary, dangerous,” I murmur, “I spent my whole life being scared of my magic, because that’s what I was told to feel. But just like fire, or the ocean, or the wind…”

Jinx is watching me, her purple-pink eyes unreadable, her expression soft and solemn.

Even with the inscrutability of her features, though, I can’t help but feel the way that she looks at me – at my magic – at the brightest, wildest, most dangerous parts of me. It reaches right inside me and grabs hold of something I didn’t know was there.

“…all of those things are powerful and destructive,” I finish, moving my hands through the air around Isha’s head until she’s all dry, “But all of them can be gentle, too. All of them can give life, support life, as easily as they take it. If we learn to work with them. If we try.”

The little girl looks up at me, thoughtful. I don’t know how much she’s understood.

But I do know that being this close to her, having this excuse to study her face, has given me a very good look at those faintly glowing markings at her temples. They snake beneath her hair in sinuous curves. They glow, blue green, edged with hints of gold.

They looked like scars at a distance, but up close they’re a little too…orderly. Too symmetrical, almost geometric.

I’ve seen those before. I know exactly what they are.

And I know that she’ll find no home in Demacia but mine.

“All done,” I smile at her, and she scoffs a little under her breath, grins at me with her uneven little smile and dashes back to Jinx, offering her warm, dry hair for Jinx to poke at, to see what I just did.

“Thanks, Blondie,” says Jinx, lifting her eyes to mine.

She hasn’t missed what I was doing.

We’re going to talk about that. I can see it hovering in the velvet darkness of her lips.

I shake my head slightly, where Isha can’t see.

Not now, my eyes say, later.

The meat’s ready. The feast begins.

I partake only sparingly of the wolf-meat. I’ve sterilized it as best I can with my Light, and Jinx has cooked it well, if terrifyingly – amid more chaotic whirls and gushes of multicolored flame and her occultic rituals of ‘aromatic’ spices and glazes from that little metal canister in her travel pack.

“Damn,” she says at one point, “I’m gonna run out.”

The sadness in her expression is so crushing that Isha pats her hand.

But even with the extra flavoring and tenderizing from Jinx’s alarming but effective cooking methods, the meat’s gamey, stringy and tough. The Zaunite girls tuck in like ravening beasts nonetheless.

I break up my meal with as much of my wayfarer’s bread, cheese, and our foraged berries as I dare spare. I don’t want to waste the meat…

But, by the Protector’s grace, I yearn for vegetables.

I’m eyeing what’s left of the wolf. I’d made sure to remove the recognizable parts from their sight, as much for Jinx as for Isha, remembering how she’d reacted to seeing one up close during the battle, freezing up like that. I probably know why.

It gave me no thrill to take the life of an animal merely hunting for food, in self-defense or not, and less to butcher it.

Murkwolves, I muse, this far south, and this aggressive…it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Such unnatural patterns, we Demacians had long been taught, were often omens of Magic being wielded by the wicked close by, meddling with the forces of nature and throwing them out of balance.

In my time since coming to Terbisia, I’ve made it my mission to peel away the layers of superstition and prejudice surrounding mages in my kingdom and shed light upon the truth – but my research, and my experience, has confirmed that particular kernel of folk wisdom is not without merit.

Magic, powerful magic, particularly wielded recklessly, can throw nature out of balance.

I wonder how far away Sylas’ mage rebellion is, right now. If he still means to free Demacia’s mages by tearing the entire noble class down, butchering ‘the swine’ to make every Demacian a king.

If, while still swearing himself my friend, he still means to kill my family.

My eyes are glazed and distant. I know they must be, because when I come back to myself, Jinx is watching me from the corner of hers.

Quiet, pensive.

Isha, belly full of hot meal and face sticky with grease, sleeps tucked against Jinx’s knee.

My eyes wander from the sleeping child to the doodles she’s idly drawn in the dirt with her stick. I can see them quite clearly despite the dim lighting. Shadows flood their shallow channels in the dying glow of the fire.

She’s drawn stick figures. Herself; I recognize the hair and the bowl-shaped helmet with the goggles on it from Jinx’s doll of her. Jinx, beside her, unmistakable, except scribbled with ludicrously long braids behind her head.

A taller figure with a scratch of short hair and a spiky looking jacket. A giant, hulking monster figure with a spiky grimace and a sad face.

Vi and Vander, I’m sure.

Firelight reflects in Jinx’s eyes. She’s stroking Isha’s hair, keeping contact with her, anchoring her to the physical reality of what’s happened to us tonight.

She’s looking at Isha’s drawing. Of her. Of their family.

Lost, broken, so far away, but…

“Luxie,” she murmurs, “…am I…gonna wake up?”

The firelight flickers in the space between us.

“I think you’re already awake,” I give her, softly, hugging my knee and watching the embers drift, “Maybe the most awake I’ve seen you.”

“But it’s impossible.”

“This world sometimes does impossible things.”

A little flinch cracks through Jinx’s expression.

Her eyes are on something Isha doodled just above Jinx’s head in her drawing; the outline of a flying bird.

Jinx furrows her brows and makes that little ‘tch’ sound, just like she did when Isha signed her answer to that question earlier.

“Not for me,” she whispers, “…Vi came back… Vander came back… Ekko came back…every time someone comes back, every time I’m almost happy, that’s when it all goes wrong.”

“Then that’s the chain I’ll break to prove you wrong.”

She looks up at me, her eyes bitterly wounded, but I won’t let her do this to herself.

“Terbisia is a place of hope and healing,” I smile at her, “Hard work, too, but that can be healing, and I somehow don’t think that scares you. You’ll have a home, a space to find out who you are, who she is, who you can be together. All you have to do is accept it.”

“What if I don’t…” Jinx swallows, “Deserve that?”

“I don’t care what you deserve, or don’t deserve,” I hold firm, “Who you were doesn’t define you, Jinx, only what you choose to do with yourself now.”

A little shivering breath breaks her lips.

“Jinx,” my voice is a little softer, now, and I lean forward, looking her in the eyes, “Why did you come to Demacia?”

“…I…” she searches, “…to…walk away. To end the cycle.”

“You wanted a fresh start,” I give her my whole smile, “Here it is. Your chance. And hers, too.”

She doesn’t speak to me for a long moment. Her eyes still search mine, each flicker catching new gleams of fireglow in their iridescent purple-pink planes.

There’s fear there, and longing, and caution.

“Why are you so nice to me?”

I don’t know how to respond to that.

“I guess…” I’ve licked my lips, unthinking, “I see a lot of myself in you.”

Jinx gives a little ‘heh’ of a laugh and shakes her head.

“That the only reason, Flashlight?”

My heart is pounding, suddenly.

“I think you know the other, Jinx.”

She pauses.

The space between us yawns, cavernous.

“You’re my friend,” Jinx swallows, “That’s right, isn’t it?”

A slow breath passes my lips.

All of my words stay trapped in the gulf between our eyes.

“Always.”

The fire burns slowly down.

The bonfire outside is only cold ash. The remains of our meal and our attackers have been moved away from the site and buried, so as not to attract more scavengers.

It’s raining, a soft, tickling drizzle, a subtle harmony to the melody of the crackling hearth.

The bed is waiting for us.

My eyes and Jinx’s still brush like the hands of parting lovers.

But Isha murmurs in her arms.

I don’t say anything, I just give her a warm, encouraging smile and start to set up my bedroll on the little bench opposite hers.

My boots are already off and tucked in the little alcove next to the door, next to hers. I slip the hairband from my hair and shake it out before I sit on the floor and start setting up my things.

It’s a good excuse not to look at her. To give her space.

They need this.

Jinx is still raw, still built of gaping wounds, stitched haphazardly into the shape of a girl.

Give them the space. Let them have it.

But one of those wounds, maybe the worst of them, has unexpectedly closed.

She needs to be with her daughter.                                            

A sidelong glance shows me the sleeping child’s face.

She still needs time to heal.

Malnourished. Pitted with little scars and scratches.

They’ll both need it.

I haven’t told her, yet. About the Mage-marks on her child’s cheeks. Maybe she already knows what they mean.

But if she doesn’t, it’s best if she grows accustomed to having Isha back before we talk about anything else.

Isha’s made one thing less complicated, at least; it’ll be a lot easier for me to sell bringing a young foreign mother and her daughter to my community than a notorious Zaunite terrorist and revolutionary.

The people of Terbisia are refugees, some of them also foreign, almost all of them Mages. They understand what it is to be cast adrift in an unloving world.

But they’re all with me because they wanted nothing to do with Sylas and his rebellion.

Yes, a single mother, fleeing the Noxian invasion of Piltover and Zaun with her little girl, and with valuable skills to bring to the community, she’ll fit in just fine.

I’ve set up my bedroll. My day-clothes are laid out to try by the hearth. I’m still trying not to feel Jinx’s eyes on my bared skin as I slip into my nightclothes.

I can almost feel the warm slither of her hands in my imagination, following the path of her eyes…

It’ll be fine.

A shiver passes through me. I can’t resist a glance behind.

Jinx lies curled up on her bunk, Isha tucked against her chest like a small, furled-up bat.

Jinx’s luminous eyes watch me, her expression unreadable, save for a fragile softness in her brows.

We’re barely feet away across the tiny space of the bothy.

I moved too fast. I came close to hurting her…

But it’s still insurmountable.

This is the right call.

A tiny, timid smile crosses my lips.

I can feel it. I’m losing something, something I didn’t know I had.

But maybe something that never really belonged to me.

“Goodnight, Jinx.”

Only her silence, and the soft shiver of her breath, replies.

I pull the blankets up under my chin, turn my face to the stone wall, and let troubled sleep take me.

Chapter Text

The rainy night gives way to a foggy morning as we breakfast, tidy up and gather our belongings, and depart the bothy.

The look on Isha’s face when I bring Starfire out from the stable is one I don’t think I was quite ready for; Demacian children are so accustomed to the sight of horses that I hadn’t even considered that she might not have seen him up close until now.

She’s staring at him with a mix of wonder and trepidation as I groom him, saddle him, and finally mount up for the road.

Jinx snickers at her and then peeks up at me with one of those blazing eyes.

“Looks like Brave Sir Crownguard’s mighty steed has got a new fan.”

I roll my eyes at her, “Lady Crownguard, if you please, and his name is Starfire.”

I sign it for Isha, giving her a questioning look; she shakes her head and corrects me with a firmer sign for star – pointing up – and fire – pointing back at the remains of the bonfire.

“Oh, thank you,” I smile at her and repeat the gesture, with a little quizzical tilt of my head to confirm, “Like this?”

Starfire, I sign, in the Zaunite fashion, is my horse’s name…

…I’m forced to use the Demacian sign for horse of course. Isha bobs her head and grins, pushing her helmet back into place.

She then repeats the Demacian ‘horse’ back to me, with an eager, gap-toothed grin and a hopeful look at Jinx.

“What’s wrong with two legs?” Jinx grumbles.

Isha jostles her leg, hugging onto her and peering up with big golden eyes.

“Think she wants to join you up there,” she scoffs, “Pff, traitor.”

Isha pouts at her, and Jinx rolls her eyes and gives a dramatic, huffy sigh.

“Oh, I guess you can. I guess. Fine. Go, betray me for the pretty blonde lady knight who smells like sunlight and rides a dashing steed across the fields…I mean if she says it’s okay.”

Isha giggles and turns the pleading look onto me.

I’m still processing hearing ‘pretty’ and ‘smells like sunlight’ from Jinx in a way that won’t make me stammer my next vocalization, but I can see Jinx’s game, so I play along, too.

“Oh, so you wish to ride Starfire?” my intonation rises to its most polished, patrician key, “This is an honor reserved only for the very bravest and most brilliant of heroes, you know. Many have I turned away from such a request…”

I let her have that little moment of doubt and disappointment before I lower my lashes, give a genteel smile and lean over in the saddle to offer my hand.

“…but for one as bold and true as our Princess Isha, what can I do but acquiesce?”

Amber eyes light up with joy.

Jinx moans and grumbles theatrically as she hoists Isha into her arms.

“Alas, what can a vile villainess do to compete? Am I so easily abandoned?” Jinx sighs, “All those beetle battles, all the legendary exploits of Stinkmaw and Scuttlebutt, all for nought…”

“Ooh,” I let my eyes glitter, “You’ll have to tell me about those! They sound wild. I’m truly honored to share a journey with such dangerous rebels and deadly troublemakers as you both. I wonder how Demacia shall survive?”

Jinx scoffs but widens her eyes as Isha plants a conciliatory smooch on her forehead.

“Fine then,” Jinx mutters, and lifts Isha into my waiting grip and onto the saddle behind me, “We’ll reconvene for villainy later.”

As we make the exchange, Jinx’s hand briefly brushes mine. I feel the tickle of her metal finger across the back of my palm. I see a flicker of her warm, warm smile, and a soft little pang behind her eyes as it slips from her face.

She looks away.

Isha is giggling, eyes darting around, glancing over her shoulder to watch Starfire’s tail swish. But she’s a canny child; she makes no attempt to grab it, or otherwise disrupt him, and she shifts to brace herself well against my back.

“Hold on tight,” I say to her, hoping that she can truly hear me clearly, given the awkward angle for signing or lip-reading, “Put your hands there, yes, and grip. We’ll ride slow at first, so Jinx can keep up with us…”

Jinx turns away from us, a faint Hextech pulse as she powers up her ‘Rhino’ weapon’s weight control runes and shoulders the huge bag like it weighs nothing.

But there’s a flicker of that smile again, observing Isha and I together as I explain what to do before we ride out.

“Slow? Nah. Give ‘er a show,” Jinx whispers near my leg, “I’ll catch up.”

“Oh, will you? Then, as you wish,” the smile finds me, “Hold on tight, Isha.”

“Buckle up, Scrunglebean!” Jinx hollers.

And, once I’m sure she’s got an iron grip, I answer with, “We ride!”

Starfire and I have been together for a long time. He knows my every signal, and I his every mood. It takes only the tap and squeeze of my legs; his sharp whinny cuts the air and clods of dirt pound from the impact of his hoofs as his gaits smoothly transition – and accelerate.

Isha’s eyes fly wide over my shoulder. She’s clinging on like a crab on a rock, peering past the streaming banners of my hair and cloak; wind rushes into our faces as Starfire shows his speed.

Her laughter joins my own, and the weight in my heart, piece by piece, falls away into the wind.

Jinx catches up to us after I’ve given Starfire his head just enough to delight the little girl and warm him up for the ride ahead of us. I’ve no desire to tire him out, but the roads are familiar and we’re in no urgency, so there’ll be plenty of opportunities to rest him along the way.

Jinx is flailing her arms and puffing dramatically as she catches us, though I’ve seen her frankly terrifying endurance firsthand the day before. I know she’s hamming it up for Isha, again, wheezing and slapping her knees, bent double.

“…whew, you two, off into the distance! Yer killin’ me here, Sunbeam!”

Isha’s smug smirk is the stuff of legends. She signs are you jealous? back at Jinx, who gives a little choking sound in the back of her throat and plants her hands on her hips.

“Jealous? Me? You forget who you’re talkin’ to, kiddo! The Maven of Mischief, the Monarch of Misrule, spurns the thought of shiny knights on noble steeds! Mark my words, I’ll have my totally ground based revenge!”

Isha just laughs at her, and I can’t keep the smile off my face.

The road to Terbisia scrolls beneath us. The child’s wonder and joy wraps us like a bubble as we disembark into the mist-shrouded paths ahead. Sometimes, Isha wants to walk or run, sometimes I’m letting Starfire rest and walking him beside them, sometimes we’re riding together and racing Jinx with her legs akimbo, her long bang whipping around like a dancing snake, and the ludicrous bag bouncing at her back.

Step by step, piece by piece, something’s coming together.

Piece by piece, word by word, Isha shares her language with me as the journey wears on.

“Rain” as we pull our hoods up and Isha huddles under my cloak, the rattle of raindrops on the oversized steel echo chamber of her helmet likely quite disconcerting.

“Road”, of course, and “Water”, and “Bridge”, as we cross the weathered stones of one over a gushing, churning river of the other.

That one, Jinx pauses at, her eyes distant.

Perhaps remembering another bridge, in a far-off land, and all that had happened there.

Actions, too, ‘walking’ and ‘looking’ – and I teach her ‘ride’ and ‘riding’ – and ‘smiling’, because we do quite a lot of that.

And laughing.

She’s a little imp and a little spitfire, just like Jinx. A little less certain of herself, perhaps, but no less the heart of a stray cat.

And soon, whenever she isn’t attached to Jinx like a fifth limb, we’re exchanging actual sentences, in sign.

She misses one-arm-auntie, she secretly shares with me, when Jinx isn’t looking. I blink; we’ve only just gone through names for kinds of family members, as I regaled her with a few stories of my brother and my aunt and their heroic exploits for Demacia.

I wondered who ‘one-arm-auntie’ is for a moment, before it clicks to me that I have seen her, on the cover of a newspaper, and at a distance whilst observing the Piltover council.

The new Zaunite representative; Sevika.

Jinx’s familial associations continue to get more interesting.

I miss her too, Isha admits, and I give her my smile again.

I understand, I sign to her in our jumbled mix of Demacian and Zaunite signs; I still can’t keep up with the dizzying flash of symbols between Isha and Jinx, though Jinx does helpfully have the habit of chattering with her aloud, family is very special. I even miss my aunt too, sometimes.

Sometimes? Is she tough and mean like one-arm? Isha scrunches her nose and growls, her childish scowl a pitch-perfect impression of the one Sevika was wearing both times I saw her.

Laughter spills from me; very! Not always nice. But she is more like this…

I straighten my spine atop Starfire, draw in my breath into my upper chest until my shoulders are spread haughtily, my neck arched back and my back straight as an arrow. I turn to give Isha my most icily judgmental Aunt Tianna Eyebrow, and the child pales and shivers.

She’s scary! Isha’s fingers are a blur, scarier than wolf papa!

Oh, she is terrifying! I slacken out of my impression with an easygoing grin, and Isha blows out an exaggerated ‘phew’, sorry if I scared you! I promise I’m not scary.

I know that, Isha flashes me a sly look, Jinx knows that too.

Jinx.

She’s currently strolling a distance ahead, tinkering with some small gadget, a screw-driving device in her grip, her tongue poked between her teeth and her narrow shoulders hunkered as she mutters and swears over it, seeming to be holding a whole conversation with herself.

A Demacian breeze tickles the prickly blue fuzz at the back of her neck and tousles her floppy, choppy bang, a flicker of pink beneath the azure.

Jinx perks, a little shiver going through her, and I catch the glint of sunlight in her eyes as she turns her profile to look out east of us over a new vista of sweeping valleys, bathed in the golden glow of the afternoon.

The light gleams on the sinuous curve of her brow, her cheeks, outlines her nose and the soft, contemplative set of her lips in thought.

I cannot help the tiny sigh that slips from my own; I hope only that the child hasn’t noticed.

Alas, my hope is quickly dashed, as I feel a tiny finger poking at my hip.

Are you fighting? Isha signs, you don’t talk to her.

There isn’t heat on my cheeks; there is not.

“I-um-” in my haste, my thought to use sign language slips away, and I simply babble, “N-no we aren’t fighting at all, Isha. She’s my friend.”

Are you good friends?

“I-yes, of course. I mean, we only met on the airship, b-but your mother is a very special person and I…she’s become quite dear to…I mean she’s very nice…and very smart and…”

Isha pokes me again, a little harder.

Now I turn to her, despite the fear she might see something in my expression I’m not quite ready to face.

Protector, if the Illuminators could see me now, a trained Radiant intelligence-gatherer, totally undone by a Zaunite child.

But Isha’s brows are furrowed in the gap of her Demacian helmet.

Mother? She signs.

I frown, and look between her and Jinx.

Yes? I lift my hands, hesitantly, “Jinx is…” your mother…?

No.

Isha shakes her head, confused, then gives a shrug.

She’s my Jinx.

A flood of confusion paralyzes me. All this time, I’d just assumed…

I turn at the sound of an unexpected noise.

Jinx’s snorting laughter. She’s watched our exchange; of course she has!

“Me?” Jinx scoffs, “A mom? Her mom? Wow, Blondie. Seriously? How old do you think I was when I…yanno-”

Jinx mimes an awkward, hip-thrusting dance, complete with ‘hnf hnf’ noises, and then makes a ‘pschowww’ sound and claps her hands over her tummy, ballooning them out and finishing with a grotesque ‘wah wah’ baby impression.

Mouth agape, I slap my hands over Isha’s eyes, “Jinx! D-don’t do that in front of her!”

“Do what?”

Isha just giggles. I can’t put my hands over her ears; she’s wearing a helmet and I’m not absolutely certain she isn’t at least partially deaf.

Isha grunts and swats my hands away.

I lean past her and lower my voice to a hiss, “…lewd things!”

“Pff-ahaha,” Jinx spurts laughter, “Y’think that’s lewd? I grew up on the same street as Madam Babette’s House of Pleasures, that’s nothin’ on what these scarred eyeballs have witnessed.”

She taps the corner of her eye and I scowl at her.

“Clearly.”

Jinx snickers, “…she’s probably seen worse, anyway.”

I can’t hide it now. My cheeks are scarlet.

“That’s…I…” I blink it away and shake my head, “Jinx, I’m so sorry, I – if you aren’t – if I can ask – if you aren’t her mother – what…exactly are you two?”

Jinx, still snickering, shrugs her bony shoulder.

“Dunno, really. She fell on my head one day and just wouldn’t go,” Jinx winks at her, “Isn’t that right, ya little Trench snipe?”

Isha tips her helmet back, smirks, and gives her a finger-guns salute that Jinx returns, both of them with a ‘pschooey’ sound.

“She’s my snotgoblin,” Jinx contemplates, as if she’d never thought of it before, “My scruggleface bugcatcher. Kneebiter, scrappytooth, lil’ sumprat, y’know? My Isha? I guess.”

“Oh,” is all I have for that, feeling like the world’s grandest idiot.

Jinx just grins her shining grin at me.

Then she’s turning back to the road ahead; she sniffs the air softly, and points.

“That where we’re puttin’ our feet up for the night?”

Her nose is true; there’s a thin plume of hearth smoke rising from the valley ahead. A small town, a waypoint of my journey home, our destination for the evening.

“Yes,” I sigh, relieved to have something else diverting her from my faux pas, “That’s the town of Inglebrooke. They, um, have a reputable inn there, I’ve stayed before.”

“Cool,” says Jinx, slings Rhino in her bag over her shoulder, and winks at me.

Isha signs, Let’s go! And thrusts her fist out over my shoulder.

“You heard her, Blondie,” says Jinx, “Better keep up.”

And really, what choice do I have?

Inglebrooke is a few scanty flagstones wedged into a packed-earth road leading to a tidy bridge over quietly bubbling water. Its houses cluster either side of the thoroughfare and crawl drowsily up the forested hillside opposite the little river.

It’s the closest settlement to Terbisia; it used to be the nearest waystation for travelers and traders connecting Terbisia to the great east-west highway…

Before the earthquake.

After, it became more self-contained, more self-sufficient, and sleepier. Just another cluster of cottages and farms, a little market square, and the suspicious, curious eyes of backcountry folk typical of the deep inland of Demacia.

It was too close to the highway to be true backcountry, where a village might go generations without seeing anyone outside their immediate vicinity, let alone foreigners, yet I could still feel eyes upon Jinx’s strange garb and luridly colored hair.

But I was no stranger to these parts. In the short time I had been governor, I’d worked hard to rebuild what the devastation of the earthquake had severed, and that included the relationship between my city and its little neighbor.

Easier said than done, when so many of Terbisia’s new inhabitants were the feared and hated mages.

Still, there are few unfriendly eyes as we cross into Inglebrooke. None, even the most fervent despiser of mages and foreigners, would dare whisper a word against us in the open.

I am still Lady Crownguard, after all.

The village inn is right on the opposite side of the bridge, in what had been an old stone mill, before the village grew and the mill moved further upstream. Clusters of annexes to the building suggest ample space for guests. The bright sign of The Prodigal Lamb bids us welcome.

Jinx squints at it. “The heck’s that thing? Like a really big poro with like, an actual body and not just a big smiley head?”

“Jinx, you’ve seen sheep, the fields on the way here are full of them.”

“Oh, those.”

“Yes. Those.”

“They look weird,” Jinx narrows her eyes even more at the sign, distrustful. Isha giggles at her and reaches over from horseback to plonk her on the head with a tiny fist.

“Ow!”

“She wants to get clean and cozy,” I offer, “And so do I. So…how about you take care of Isha…”

I smoothly dismount, and offer the child a hand-down; reluctantly, she hops into my grasp – heavier than I thought, solid muscle for her size – and I lower her to ground height.

Jinx immediately bops her on the head in revenge; Isha pouts beneath the Demacian helmet now hiding her eyes, growls at Jinx like a small dog, and pushes it back up to glare at her.

I give them a bright roll of my eyes.

“…whilst I take care of Starfire, clearly the most civilized among us.”

I take his reins and soothe him with soft words, before I turn to our companions; “Sort your things out and I’ll meet you back here in a moment, all right? Then we’ll go in and get a room.”

Jinx’s sullen eyes tell me she’s thinking of getting bored and making some manner of mischief; I give her my best Crownguard eyebrow and she scowls at me.

But Isha takes her hand and gives me a crisp salute.

“Done deal, then,” say I.

I know who I trust to keep who out of trouble. And that’s rather a worry.

“Lady Crownguard,” says the innkeeper, a sallow-faced man of straight back and grey hair I have had just such an exchange with many a time on my journeys to and from Terbisia, “Always a great honor to see you at our establishment.”

His heavy guestbook thuds open; the familiar scratching of a quill follows.

“For one night, shall it be?”

It almost always is. I have little to do in this town, save to pass through, unless there be some next-day meeting with the town council that winds up dragging on. It’s so close to Terbisia it’s almost worth the ride home.

But not tonight.

I give him a smile still dazzling despite my growing bone-weariness; “Yes, thank you, Vittrem, and breakfast upon the morrow.”

The purple glow of Jinx’s eyes, hovering in the doorway, gives him a start; he jumps as if he’s seen a Darkin at his doorstep and mutters a prayer to the Protector.

I give him a chastening arch of my brow before he says anything more, and gesture my companions inside with a gentle beckoning of my hand.

“Breakfast for three, actually.”

His eyes dart across the thin, pallid foreigner with her lurid hair, scant clothes and terrifying eyes, and the scrappy child beside her.

My guileless smile challenges him. It’s not the first time I’ve passed through with refugees in my care, bound for Terbisia, and it’ll likely not be the last.

But even an uncomplicated man can tell that Jinx is something else.

“A-aah,” he veers to the familiar, “G-guests, yes, I see, traveling with you, very well, three for breakfast…”

His quill is wobbling slightly, still nervous. Jinx’s silent, unblinking snake stare and the sullen look from the child at her hip are both on him.

“There you are, two rooms, and breakfasts upon the morning.”

My smile flickers slightly.

Two rooms.

Of course, two rooms…

Jinx’s eyes twitch to me, questioning.

We don’t need two rooms, her eyes and the furrow of her brows tell me she’s thinking. We don’t take up much space, it’s safer to stay together, where we can keep watch together in an unfamiliar place, stupid to split up…

And maybe, just maybe, her thoughts stray to the nights we spent on the airship. The warmth of her body and mine.

My thoughts are there.

But the innkeeper is recording the details, heedless of our thoughts, because of course, I am Lady Crownguard, and these people are foreign refugees in my care. That they will get a private space at all and not be bunked in the commons with drunk farmhands sleeping off a night at the tavern rather than stumbling across the fields to their farmsteads in the dark is a privilege bought by my name. But of course, he has put me in my own room, the best in his establishment.

And why should he not? I’ve never shared a room before…

And I am, after all, Lady Crownguard.

“Of course,” I clear my throat, “Two rooms. Thank you, innkeeper.”

“Of course, My Lady, for House Crownguard, our finest service.”

A key is given to me, to secure my belongings in my space, and the innkeeper takes my bags. At the glare Jinx gives him, he backs away from Rhino.

They follow me as I follow him wordlessly up the stairs, two stray cats lured in by the warmth of a hearth, but suspicious of every shadow.

Jinx and Isha’s room has no key, only a simple wooden latch, and the room beyond is plain. There is a single cot bed within, but it’s large enough to sleep a Demacian soldier, so both of them can easily fit, with room to spare.

“Milady, supper shall be served in the commons below when you’re ready.”

“Thank you, Vittrem. Please give my regards to Saska, would you?”

The man gives a polite smile at the mention of his wife, a little warmer than his previous, and bobs his head as he withdraws.

Jinx sits on the bed, looking up at me through her bang, while Isha toddles around the room, peeking and poking at its few sparse adornments, alive with curiosity, like it was a great hall in a palace.

“Blondie,” Jinx says, her eyes huge and luminous beyond the blue-and-purple streak of her hair, “You’re … not staying with us?”

All I can do is give her a wan smile.

I don’t know why I can’t, either.

But I can’t.

“I’ll see you at supper.”

Our bellies are full of hearty Demacian farmer’s stew with a side of fresh vegetables, by far the finest meal we’ve had since I met her, and it takes the teeth off the tension between us, or at least distracts Jinx and Isha for the moment.

I’ve never seen anyone devour a meal with such naked gusto, not even the most famished of my refugees; though likely rather bland by Zaunite flavor standards, the meal is hearty, wholesome and filling. Isha’s huge eyes looked like she’d never eaten anything so delicious in her life.

With a pang, I know that it’s likely true. But then again, no-one in the inn has witnessed Zaunite table manners until tonight, so it is a night of firsts all round.

I’m fortunately able to wield my kindly smile and soft, sympathetic glances between my guests and the locals to imbue the scene with a sense of the great, compassionate noble lady giving grace to the poor, starved foreigners in her care. The affronted stares become amusement, pity, and admiration at my kindly patience with them.

I hate every moment of that, and I deserve the faint hints of spite and scorn in amethyst eyes when Jinx, ever sharply observant, figures out that’s what’s happening.

But she doesn’t make a scene.

And I don’t quite know what that costs her, but I feel as if it does.

When our motley trio stumbles up the stairs, the wind picks up, howling outside through the timbers and pulling the weaker leaves quite unseasonally early from some of the trees to swirl past the dirty glass of the stairwell’s lone window.

“Jinx,” I offer her, my words catching on my tongue as she stands on the threshold of their room.

She’s turning away, and my hand catches hers.

Her fingers are warm. So warm.

I remember how it first felt to hold them, on the airship, with Isha’s lifeless doll, stitched with such love, between them.

Jinx pauses, looking back at me with a faint hint of startlement, as if she doesn’t quite know what to say back.

“Thank you,” my smile is sincere, soft as I can make it, “I know all of this is strange. But we’re almost to my home. Just get some rest…”

Her eyes wander mine.

“Okay,” she whispers, “Sure, Sunbeam.”

Her fingers slip away from me.

It’s Isha who looks up at me from behind the crack in the closing door, and signs, see you, as her face disappears.

I sign sleep well, with a returning of her smile before the door closes.

I hope I’d kept the lump of weight in my throat from creeping into it.

For Isha’s sake.

The wind’s still rustling and whistling through the timbers and the boughs of the big tree in the innyard, like the rushing of the sea and the creaking of a ship’s hull over my head.

The familiar bed in the familiar guest suite, a tiny, cramped, and poor appointment by the standards of the castles and palaces I was accustomed to before – before Sylas – before the rebellion – is warm, comfortable, blissfully cozy to me now. There is a candle by my bed, a small chest at the foot to secure my belongings, and even a book of poems the innkeeper’s wife has left knowing I would be staying there.

I wonder if Jinx and Isha are able to sleep.

My thoughts waver in and out of past and present; the horrors of what had happened in Piltover, the thrum and pulse of the Arcane gone wild, the hollow, faceless puppets, that horrible moment when threads of gold had reached down from the sky and sunk into my thoughts…

The way my Light had flared within, resisting them with all its might, to no avail.

Half-awake, I remembered something that my waking mind did not; that strange, liminal, euphoric sense of being connected, motes of Light joining mine, spread across the city, spreading further with each moment we’d all been joined.

I realize it, then. That she’d been there. She’d been there too, at that moment, not so far away from me. It’d touched her mind, just like mine…

I’d felt her, the colors of her soul, all that bottomless grief, searing spite, and unfettered joy that was hers, that was her, before we’d ever met.

Jinx.

My fingers curl in the sheets. It’s a cold night, but my skin is hot against my nightclothes, against the blanket pulled up over my body.

My thoughts are full of her.

“…Jinx,” I whisper, nearly moan, and rub my cheek into sheets that do not smell like her.

My legs tangle with themselves. I’m alive, on fire, with the thought of her. My skin, my belly, burning at her absence.

I don’t know what this feeling is. What this means. What I am supposed to do with it.

It’s only been two nights without her, and only a few nights with her, and only that one night with my arms around her body and her luminous eyes staring into me, right into my heart, and her face tucked to my breast…

My fingers twist the bedclothes. My knees are crushed together.

Not here…not in a strange bed…not alone…!

“Jinx…” it’s a moan, now, and there is a knot in my brows and beads of sweat upon them. I bite my lip almost to bleed, curl into myself, and force the conflagration of my mind toward turbulent sleep.

The wind is ever wilder outside, as if it is trying to tell me something. As if it is trying to come in to wrap me in its shrieking arms. Somehow, I take more comfort than threat from that thought.

I will dream of wild, mad things, I know. But I must sleep. Tomorrow, tomorrow, we’ll be home…

Tomorrow, I’ll find a way to talk to her, when there’s privacy, when there’s the right place and moment…

…tomorrow.

There is darkness. Color. Murmurs of voices. And the wind.

In the murmuring darkness, the susurration of movement.

The creak of wood and glass.

Skitter.

A shuffle.

My dreams freeze up with terrible thoughts. Tales of night-hags, squatting on a sleeper’s chest. Of upirs sucking the blood from the heart of the unwary as they dream.

Of a scarecrow, creaking in the fields, the crows cawing, cawing, as his long fingers stretch…

I am awake.

My eyes are wide.

The moon casts a shadow beside my bed. It’s crawling over the coverlet, on all fours, reaching for me.

I gulp air – Light LIGHT –

The dead candle ignites, not in fire, but in a ring of iridescence; more sheathing my hands as I spring up from the covers to confront the creature upon me.

My sword is by the bed, but my Light comes faster to my hand.

I need neither, as it turns out, not for the golden eyes wincing away from the sudden glow, or the little hands raising up to shield the face shying away from me.

“Isha?!” I gasp.

The window is open, creaking. She’s on the bed, rubbing her eyes and blinking as my light dims away.

Isha scowls and signs ow, bright lady! Eyes hurt!

“S-sorry,” I tuck my hands under the covers, still glowing, and scowl back at her, “But you shouldn’t sneak up on me like that – Isha, I could have hurt you! Why are you in my room? Is something wrong? Is Jinx okay?”

I’m asking too many questions, her eyes dart around, overwhelmed by them. I swallow my pounding heartbeat, shake my head, and take control of my breathing.

“T-take your time, Isha. Tell me what’s happening. Why did you come through the window?”

Isha glances to the window and shrugs, door locked, then swallows and signs, come with me. Need help.

“You need me…to help Jinx?”

Isha nods fervently. She isn’t wearing her helmet, or it’d be bobbing up and down on her head.

“What’s wrong?”

Isha just shakes her head, come see, and that isn’t comforting.

I slip quickly from the bed and snatch up my staff. It’ll make less mess than the sword, if I must use it to defend either of them. I shut the window – and latch it properly this time – and unlock the door.

We creep out into the corridor, and I lock it again behind me.

Isha’s hand is in mine as we reach Jinx’s room; the door is unlatched. I can hear her sharp murmurs, as if she’s in pain, behind it. And my heart is cold at the thought of what we might find.

But when the door opens, there is only Jinx, shivering on the bunk in a tangle of the bedclothes, lying on her side.

She twitches, her brows knitting in her sleep, a little whining cry huffing from her twisting lips.

“…sha…don’t…don’t…” she mumbles.

A nightmare. Just a nightmare.

“…don’t go…I didn’t…but it wasn’t my…did it right…why…”

From the solemn look on Isha’s face, she’s seen this before.

But she’s still holding my hand. She looks up to me with big eyes.

She doesn’t need to sign. I give her a gentle nod and latch the door behind us.

Then I round to the far side of the bed and lay my staff beside it.

“Shh…” I murmur to Jinx, letting my voice intrude into her thoughts, as I lift back the covers and kneel on the bed behind her, “…yes you did, you did everything right. You did so good, and everything is all right.”

“…Isha…” she sobs, it’s so tiny, it sticks in my heart.

“She’s here with you, Jinx. And I’m here with you.”

I know Jinx rarely sleeps. And when she does, she can be hair-trigger; and her strength, her reflexes, are deadly.

This is dangerous.

But I let the Light come to my hands, soft as dimming candleglow, and I lay them upon the center of her curved, hunched back.

“…shh…” I murmur again.

She sucks in a tiny shivering breath.

And I climb in behind her.

Her back, barely covered by a thin night-shirt, is bony and strong and searingly hot. The Shimmer in her bloodstream, maybe, pushing her into her fight-or-flight state of activity, but trapped, I hope, in dreams.

…dangerous…

She doesn’t lash out at me, to my relief. My arms loop tenderly around her body and I draw myself against her back.

“…warm,” Jinx mumbles, “…s’that…the…sun…”

Her hand catches mine, tangling our fingers.

She still hasn’t opened her eyes.

“That’s me, I guess,” I smile behind her ear.

Relief crosses Isha’s face. She’s still standing by the bed, watching us, watching the tension smooth away from Jinx’s features.

Her little hand reaches over to brush Jinx’s bang away from her eyes and nose.

She looks up at me, big golden eyes questioning.

“We’ve got her, Isha,” I whisper, “Time to sleep…?”

The little girl blows out a relieved sigh, brightens, and nods.

She rubs her eyes, and I lift Jinx’s arm, our fingers still linked, creating a space next to her chest.

Isha doesn’t hesitate. She crawls right into the space I’ve made, tucking herself against Jinx, the smallest of three spoons in a kitchen drawer.

Jinx whimpers as she feels Isha’s weight settle against her and she wraps her arms around the little one, pulling my hand with her to rest in Isha’s bushy tangle of hair.

Her eyes briefly flutter open.

I feel the subtle shift of her breath when she feels the warmth of my chest against her back and looks at her hand in mine.

The slow growing tension of surprise in her shoulders.

Have I crossed a line…?

My heart rate picks up.

Is she going to push me away…?

Jinx’s breath has picked up, quickened slightly. I see her head tilt to look up, as far back as she can.

My eyes brush hers. I don’t know what to do, to say. My lips part but nothing comes out.

I let everything be said with my eyes.

Jinx’s lower lip trembles with unspoken words, then tucks beneath the pinch of her teeth.

Her eyes dart around, searching, thinking.

But her shoulders sink. She breathes out, shallow and slow.

Her legs shift beneath the covers. I feel warmth, the calloused cup of her heel, the softness of the back of her calf, contrasting as they gently scrape my shin.

The murmur that breaks from me shivers only a little. I won’t let it become a sob. I won’t let it become need.

My face sinks into the nape of her neck, the scruff of her cropped hair tickling my brow. I breathe the scent of her skin, the warm subtle musk of her, with those hints of metal and smoke she can never quite scrub away, that I would never want her to.

Isha murmurs and shifts, burrows against Jinx’s thin chest.

An island in the whispering moans of the wind outside our tiny, shared space, we lie like that, together.

Sleep, at last, claims me, I know not when.

The world is still drowned in blue-grey night when I wake. My back prickles with cold, and the gale has only grown louder.

At first, I can’t think of what might have woken me from my warm dreams of floating on blue clouds beneath a soft azure sky with white arms wrapped around me.

But I stir to Jinx’s arm flung carelessly over me, Jinx’s legs akimbo, and Jinx’s brow crushed against mine.

“Mm?”

“…Blondie,” she whispers, and I suddenly notice how sharp and soft her voice is.

How cold and tense her body becomes, as she slowly uncurls from her sleep, too.

“…where’s Isha?”

The two little words drag me instantly from my drowsiness.

Only we two are in the bed. There’s no sign of her, and the door is unlatched, and hanging open.

“Isha!” it snaps from my lips, and then we’re on our feet, untangling from our nightclothes, our bedclothes, and each other to spring for the door, to search the room and the hall –

No other thought in our heads but find her.

“No no no,” is on Jinx’s breath, over and over, her eyes darting about, increasingly frantic, “…she wouldn’t go off on her own, she knows to stay near…she knows…”

“It shouldn’t be dangerous here,” I mutter, ducking my head into my room to grab my tunic and boots, while Jinx pulls on her own, “I’ll bet she’s just downstairs, using the lavatory, or she’s bothering the innkeeper’s wife!”

This town isn’t dangerous. It shouldn’t be. And Isha has survived in far more hostile environments. A canny child of the Trench of Zaun like her should come to no harm in a sleepy Demacian village.

It should be safe. It should be…

But there’s panic in Jinx’s eyes anyway, and nothing I can say will take it from her.

“Jinx, look at me.”

I catch her small, clawlike hand in mine.

“We’ll find her.”

She gives a small, shaky nod, but beside the panic in her darting eyes – the way she scowls and glares at empty spaces as if challenging invisible figures mocking her for letting herself think she was safe…

I know that if anyone has caused harm to Isha, I won’t be able to stop her from retaliating.

Worse; I might not want to.

Downstairs we creep, quick and quiet as mice. Before dawn, the town is silent, but the first fingers of grey are upon the horizon, and the rural folk of Demacia are early to rise. Only the storming winds have kept the most intrepid indoors.

A heavy flap of wood catches our attention.

The front door should still be securely closed, but it swings wildly in the wind.

And there are tiny, bare footprints in the mud of the square beyond.

Outside, our voices call her name, but the storm swallows them. The trees are dancing a wild, creaking, tumultuous dance, their leafy manes rippling in the furious gusts.

No thunder, no rain, but…

“Isha! Isha-”

My eyes fly wide as I spot a tiny figure in a thin tunic, swaying in a strange sinuous dance upon the cobbles of the square, by the fountain, as if she were a puppet tugged on invisible strings.

“Isha!”

Slowly, Isha tilts her head back, and I catch the glint of the mage-markings on her cheeks – spreading down them – pale azure lines, glowing.

She lifts from the cobbles, arms spread, the winds flapping her clothes and hair, swirling the leaves around her into a column, lifting her…

Into the air.

My heart is in my throat; Jinx’s heart is in her eyes.

I’m running, but I can’t match Jinx.

Pink flashes in my periphery; two serpent trails dart across the square in a blink. It takes me a heartbeat to realize that Jinx has moved – moved with an uncanny snap of motion, too fast to see, like an insect vanishing out of the corner of one’s eye in defiance of an attempt to track its flight.

And she’s tackled Isha from the air, tumbling with her upon the cobbles, cushioning her fall with her own body and her arms wrapped around her like a pouncing spider.

“Isha, Isha, stay with me, don’t go, don’t go, you’re okay…” Jinx’s razor whispers bubble up as I reach them, “…shh shhh stay stay with me…”

The child stares over her shoulder, distantly, into the sky. She doesn’t seem distressed at all; only distant, her expression contemplative.

Then she sees the Light in my hand, involuntarily called by my panic, a shifting halo of iridescence glowing through my unclad fingers, rendering them a translucent orange as if I held them to the sun.

The wind whispers around me, sheathing me in a sudden gust that sucks away my voice.

But feels, uncannily, like the brush of a reassuring hand along my shoulder, upon my cheek.

Then it passes like a ghost’s breath. The wind dies down. The storm subsides to silence.

Isha’s eyes focus and she blinks, coming out of it, sucking in a sharp breath and staring around in surprise and alarm to find herself outside in the cold, wrapped up by a nearly frantic Jinx.

“Jinx!” I hiss to her, and it’s that, and Isha’s small cry of surprise that slacken Jinx’s claw-grip.

She sits up, still cradling Isha, but finally slips back from her to glare.

What happened!? She gestures, so aggressively I think what the hell happened would be a better translation.

Isha peers about nervously, big eyes darting and disoriented.

She looks back at me, frowning, as if searching for confirmation. But I have nothing to give her.

“You ran outside,” I offer instead, “We were worried about you.”

It hasn’t slipped my attention that the glowing markings on her cheeks have died away; but I can still see the faintest gleam there, like light on spider silk.

Isha furrows her brow and turns back to Jinx.

Jinx wipes her nose, sucking in a long sniff, and scowls at Isha; the child merely gives her that puzzled look again, and signs something.

I’ve seen that sign before.

“We need to get her inside,” I’m forcing my panic down, mantras in my mind, my Light ebbing away from my hands slower than I’d like, “We can talk it over there, but if anyone sees…mages aren’t fully accepted, even now, we can’t let anyone see us here…”

“What are you talking about?” Jinx hisses, “She’s not a – magic person – mage! Whatever, Blondie! She’s my Isha!”

Turning away, my eyes search the square.

Jinx is still furiously signing, trying to squeeze some kind of answer out of Isha. But I’m finding my own, spread all around us upon the cobbles.

“Jinx,” I lick my lips, knowing I must look almost as pale as her.

The leaves, the dust, have fallen in long, winding lines, swirls and whorls and spirals, delicate as if they were drawn by a master calligrapher’s brush.

Patterns. Beautiful, graceful…

And distinctly arcane.

Wonder and horror spread through me. Through both of us.

“Isha,” I ask the child in her arms, “Did you do this…?”

She stares at me with that faraway look and signs, told me to.

“…who told you to?”

She swallows, looks up at me, and gets that same vaguely thoughtful look on her face.

Then she shrugs and makes the same sign. Two words, the ones I don’t recognize, and Jinx makes the same face she made on the first night.

It’s the same answer she gave Jinx when she’d asked her how she’d survived.

“What does that sign mean?”

Jinx’s eyes are glazed, distant, and I know it’s something that makes no sense to her.

Or more sense than she wants to believe.

“…wind lady.”