It's a Lovely Day in Piltover (Lux/Jinx)

Chapter 3: Cause I Wanna Stay

Almost a week had passed since they'd met. She was sitting at Powder's desk with her exuberantly sharing her book again, the Porofessor in her lap and nibbling at the Poro-snax Powder had lured it over with. Both of them still soaked from the rain and from flicking water at each other in the halls. The start-of-session reading didn't last long, leaving Powder to happily ramble away about the applications of rotary cam shafts and gears and -

She was trying. Lux knew. She knew what she had to do. But oh, with Powder next to her it was so hard.

The way she wrote her notes was so... strange and endearing. Whatever Heimerdinger said went down on the paper in varying sizes and shapes of letters that matched the cadence of the professor's speech - and that was amazing, why wasn't all transcription of speech like that to capture intonation without any doubt about what had actually been said? - and curling between the twisting words was Powder's annotation and commentary and doodles in a way that the parts of her she knew she'd have to lean into would have called childish, ignoring the actual content of what she'd written to dismiss it as not normal or...

Breathe. The week isn't over yet. The class isn't over yet.

"I think we've almost got the purifier done." Powder smiled, so wide, so innocent, so oblivious. No condescension or failure in that lack of knowledge. And now - look at Lux. Look at yourself. Fetishising her innocence.

"Good," she managed to say.

"Once we've got the individual parts working, and we aren't confined to just this -" Powder gestured at the disassembled metal jumble of pieces that would have looked like a broken puzzle if she hadn't spent so much time working on it with Powder that she probably could have put it back together if she'd tried - "We might be able to really clean up some of the crap that still flows down into Zaun from topside." Her voice quietened. "I might finally be able to start making things better with Ekko..."

She managed to nod. What was she meant to say? Suddenly, Powder was like anyone else, like everyone else, and she was shuffling desperately to find the Right Thing, and that switch from ease to familiar discomfort was nauseating.

She'd proved she couldn't resist temptation, on the rooftop. She'd proved it. She'd asked about her past, had brushed off her uncovering of Powder's secrets. Had acted like she wouldn't either use Powder as a weapon to restart the war between her cities, or as a weapon for her own ends. She couldn't - stop herself from using Powder, if she was around her. There was only one way to stop it.

The length of her life stretched before her without Powder, a lifelong wait for a prison sentence and a death she'd deserve either way and she wanted to scream.

She kept smiling, because that was what Lux did. She - she would try to give Powder one last, real smile. To enjoy this last hour with her. To laugh at the right moments (so hard her eyes stung and that was definitely why they stung).

"What was that thing about the Freljordian runes you wanted to show me? I think we got distracted from it but I've been bursting to ask all week, but I thought it might be rude? Or something..."

"Mm?"

"The one about the light rune that you said wouldn't work? Heimerdinger interrupted us on the first day?" Powder pulled her notebook open, flicked to a page Lux had seen before. Started drawing out another Light rune. She tried to keep the flinch just to her fingers and toes when she felt it go wrong.

Almost against her will, she felt her hands reach out. "Not like that. Here." (large hands curling around hers) "And it's not - it depends what you want the light to do but a single rune won't be flexible enough. Or it could be, depending on the use, but you don't want to accidentally create a great rune - " (imagine what you could do at your worst, let it go, and then you will control it) " - you want to..."