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 dry 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.