A/N: I wrote this fic pre-lore change, so the League is in it. Italics at the beginning and end of each chapter are from the past.

Lux kept her right hand behind her back, her fingers tightened almost painfully around the cool, smooth metal of the baton she clutched. She used her free hand to knock on the door in front of her, two sharp raps on the dark wood that echoed in the room behind it. An answer wasn't long in coming; Garen pulled open the door with an expression that showed he thought it was their mother knocking, not Lux, and his face softened almost immediately. Still, she noted the exhaustion that lined his face, and the creases around his mouth that were exacerbated when he smiled.

"Hey, sunshine. I was just about to come see you."

The corner of Lux's mouth twitched upwards, and she pushed past him, rotating quickly so that she kept the baton out of his line of sight.

"Hello."

She put all the dignity that her 11 year old self could muster into that one word, satisfied with how proper and polite she sounded. Mother would have been pleased.

She noticed clearly the momentary falter in Garen's smile, like he didn't quite recognize her voice; she supposed he actually might not have, considering that this was the second time in four years that he had been home to visit, and so much had changed while he was away.

Which was why she was in his room right now.

She stationed herself in the middle of the room while Garen gave her a wary stare, uncomfortable at how silent and still she was being. He was used to a very energetic, very talkative Lux, and this prim quietness was disturbingly unnatural for her- or any 11 year old, for that matter.

"I have something to show you."

She let a small amount of her usual excitement creep into her voice, and Garen crossed his arms, sufficiently interested now, although his unease remained.

"What's up, Lux?"

She whipped out the baton from behind her back with no further delay, a nearly blinding smile gracing her features. Garen stared at it for a few long, drawn out seconds, appreciating the pretty metalwork and flowing designs, but otherwise didn't see what the big deal was; it was pretty, but simple, and he was sure she had much more interesting toys than that.

"It's… pretty, lightbulb. Very nice."

Her thin eyebrows knit together in a delicate frown, and she stuck out her bottom lip in a frustrated pout that still didn't manage to seem childish, despite the face it was on.

"Don't be daft. Watch."

Again, Garen was disturbed by the tone of Lux's voice, which was too sullen, too aged for someone so young, but he nodded for her to continue.

"Okay."

She twirled the baton between her fingers with all the grace and ease of an expert, although she couldn't have had it for too long; she certainly didn't have it when he left for his most recent deployment, and Mother hadn't mentioned it to him since then. A look of intense concentration crossed her features, increasing her frown, and she passed one end of the baton over her head, the air around the tip distorted into fractured rainbows.

Garen's mouth fell open.

Lux was well known for having very light and very shiny blonde hair that hung passed her shoulders (the only blonde in their family), which was, among other reasons, why Garen loved to call her sunshine and lightbulb and other related monikers. Now, after the pass of her baton, her tresses were a deep, deep chocolate brown, lusterless and flat. She smiled at the look on Garen's face that had moved far beyond disbelief, and spoke again in that disturbingly knowing voice.

"I've learned a great deal while you were away."

"Amelia!"

The loud bark of a voice rang clearly through the room, and Lux cringed with her fingers on the handle of the swinging door to the kitchen, plastering a neutral smile on her face before she turned around. The portly woman standing in the middle of the room had both of her meaty hands perched on her hips, and her mouth was curled into a snarl.

"Yes?"

Lux's voice sounded perfectly pleasant, which only served to make the other woman's expression sour even further; she stalked over to where she was standing, jabbing a finger at the tray Lux had in her hands.

"How many times do I have to tell you? Cutlery on the left side. Miss Du Couteau is very specific."

They both stared at where the woman's finger was pointing (Marge, the maid of maids), and at the offending fork that was, indeed, on the wrong side of the tray. Lux carefully moved it to the other side, smiling so widely when Marge looked up that it hurt her cheeks.

"Better?"

Lux's sarcasm was not missed and definitely not appreciated, and Marge responded only with a grunt and a push back towards the door, making the tray in Lux's hands tip precariously. After catching the tray and making it sure was balanced again, Lux swallowed the remainder of her bruised pride as she left the kitchen, letting the door swing closed behind her. The false smile she had maintained while Marge was chiding her dropped from her face as soon as she was out of sight, and her fingers tightened almost painfully around the metal tray in her hands.

Miss Du Couteau is very specific.

Oh yes- specifically a pain in the ass. Who in the world wants their cutlery always on the left side of their plate? Who even cares? Lux had only been employed as a maid at the Du Couteau manor for a whopping week, and she was already eye-twitchingly annoyed at anyone and everyone that worked around her, and infinitely more at the ones who employed her. Lux had been given one, simple task by her commanding officers in Demacia; track Cassiopeia. And as luck would have it, Cass was in the market for a personal handmaiden when Lux was shipped off to Noxus, so all in all, it sounded like an easy enough job to complete.

But as usual, it was not.

Within the first hour of staring her job, Lux quickly realized that Cassiopeia had no time or patience even for the people whose employment she had requested; Lux gave her her meals (with the cutlery on the left), and then she was sent off to shadow Katarina all day, and not much else. She spent the majority of her brief time at the manor standing silently at the edge of Katarina's training area outside and standing even more silently in Katarina's office, the only two places the redhead ever seemed to want to be. It made her job very, very hard.

And frustratingly boring.

As Lux left the kitchen now and headed to the service stairwell, she thought miserably of how slowly the morning was going to go, and ultimately, how slowly the rest of her deployment would go; although a month hadn't seemed too long before she'd left Demacia, she was sorely regretting taking the job. Lux shook her head, trying to focus on what she was doing now, and the brief time she would have to see Cass before she was served her lunch later in the day. She exited the stairs on the second floor of the west wing, and set down the long hallway that belonged exclusively to Cassiopeia herself; it was always shrouded in darkness and lit only by light fixtures on the walls every few paces that provided dim alcoves of relief, and Lux kept her pace swift to minimize her down time in the shadows. The hallway had a thick, dark carpet that swallowed the noise of her footsteps so completely that it didn't sound like anyone was walking down it at all, and added to the overall unease the floor had. At the very end of the hallway was a door slightly wider than the few others on the floor, and Lux stopped before it, raising a hand to rap lightly on the wood.

"Breakfast, Miss Du Couteau."

Just like every other time Lux brought her a meal, there was no immediate answer; she sat rocking on her heals in front of the door, waiting for Cass to eventually remember that she was still there.

"Come in."

Lux huffed unhappily, shifting the tray in her hands to one arm and trying to balance it the best she could while she opened the door. Once inside, she gave the room her usual once over as she walked to the table Cass had in her room just for meals; it was kept even darker than the hallway, and the only light in the room was a small lamp that was perched precariously on the edge of the long desk Cass had pressed up against the wall opposite of the door. There was a tall-backed chair that Cass was sitting in every time Lux was in the room that hid most of her hunched over form, and the desk around her hands was covered in open books and loose papers. Lux slowly set down the tray, taking an excruciatingly long amount of time to lift the lid covering the plate as she tried to read what was on some of the papers in Cass's hands. As far as she leaned and as long as she took, she still couldn't clearly read the miniscule script from the distance she was at, and the darkness of the room was no help either.

Lux sighed quietly in frustration, almost dropping the lid to the tray on the table and walking quickly out of the room. The woman spent literally all her time cooped up in her room, which for whatever reason had no windows and no other lighting besides the pitiful desk lamp. The room was never empty, never lit, and Lux was never allowed in it alone. How in the world was she supposed to finish this job? As Lux stalked back down the hallway, she was pretty close to deciding that she didn't particularly care; if she could just get through this month, she would go home and be free of Noxus, at least for a little while.

Back on the stairwell this time, Lux went up to the third floor instead of back down; as per request of Cass, she was assigned to Katarina between meal times, and it was the part of the day that she would have to spend outside while Katarina played with knives and pretend that she wasn't melting in the sun beneath her insufferably uncomfortable uniform.

She couldn't wait.

The third floor of the wing, unlike the second, was brightly lit by a healthy amount of vibrant lights, and Lux didn't feel nearly as uncomfortable walking to Kat's office as she did Cassiopeia's room. The office was clearly denoted by two very wide wooden doors that evenly split the Du Couteau crest carved into their faces, but Lux didn't knock as she would have with Cass; Katarina was used to her quietly letting herself in, and after she closed the doors behind herself Lux stood silently in front of them while she waited for Katarina to react. She was sitting behind the missive desk that dominated the middle of the room, tapping a pen against her lips and for all the world looking like a frustrated four year old faced with a difficult math problem. Lux had assumed before that the office didn't originally belong to Katarina because of the family pictures in expensive frames that were spaced evenly across the desk and the boringly simple décor of the room, coupled with the fact that not a single piece of the sparse furniture had any kind of knife mark on them at all. The floor to ceiling bookcases that covered the walls to Katarina's right and left were covered in thick layers of dust, and even as Lux watched her now, she noticed the careful way Katarina scribbled in the journal in front of her and how she didn't touch anything else on the desk.

Katarina was quick to drop her pen on the desk and snap the journal shut, sighing deeply and stuffing it into one of the drawers by her legs. She pushed her chair back, striding to the door and waving a hand at Lux as she walked past her.

"C'mon."

Lux followed her out, closing the doors behind them and keeping an even but distanced pace behind Katarina as they took the main stairwell to the ground floor. Now that she was out of the office, Katarina was twirling a dagger Lux hadn't noticed on her before between her fingers, and she rolled her shoulders like she'd spent an excruciatingly long day at the office and not just the hour so she was actually in there. As they stepped outside, Lux noticed that the frown tugging down her features while she'd been writing hadn't disappeared, even though Katarina was usually pretty happy when she was in motion; even despite Kat not being Lux's target, she was curious.

At this rate, it would be easier to find out what was plaguing Katarina than to find out anything useful about Cassiopeia.

Lux had a frown of her own as they arrived at the small training area that she assumed was made all for Katarina herself; it was a flat expanse of concrete that was half shaded and half left open to the sun, littered with training dummies that weren't set in any particular pattern that Lux could discern, but one that Katarina fit them into exactly every day even if someone moved them. She stuck the dagger in her hand into the first one she passed as she walked to the shaded side of the training area where her other sharp things were kept, and Lux followed until she was in the shade, tugging the collar of her dress a little further down her neck and settling in to wait.

Katarina's self-training was very thorough.

Most of what she did seemed very repetitive to Lux; she would spend an hour or so throwing the thinner of her knives at the smaller targets, increasing her distance from them until she was stepping off the concrete, and when she took her first break is when Lux was finally allowed to move; she walked quickly to the kitchen, fetching something cold for her to drink, and while Katarina finished her break Lux would walk to each of the target dummies and remove every knife lodged in the fake flesh. And just like every other day after Katarina was sufficiently refreshed, Lux would take the mostly empty pitcher of water back to the kitchen (and taking a moment to drink something herself) and come back to the training area to stand silently while Katarina switched from throwing knives to dueling some of the bigger, heavier dummies, something Lux doubted the efficiency of since they couldn't fight back.

This was usually about the time she would start to doubt the efficiency of what she was doing also.

It wasn't like she could have known before she took the job that it would have ended up like this, and that spying on Cassiopeia would have turned into babysitting Katarina. And now that she thought about it, it wasn't exactly like she could have refused the mission either; she'd never done it before, but it was probably treason… or was it? She was used to taking assignments as they came and learned years ago that questioning it never got her anywhere, but she had plenty of free time now to question it in privacy. She made a mental note to brush up on the minutiae of Demacian military ethics when she got home, but for now simply waited for Katarina to tire herself out.

Which seemed, today, to be rather fast.

She stuck the dagger in her hand into the dummy in front of her with a frustrated sounding grunt, and then stalked off the concrete in the direction of the house. Usually she waited for Lux to be following her, but she didn't turn around today, and Lux jogged quickly to keep up. She watched Katarina carefully as they walked through the tall front doors of the mansion, noticing that again she was turning a small knife through her fingers almost subconsciously, and even though Lux was sure that the sharp edge of the blade had come into contact with the pads of her fingers several times, her skin remained unmarked.

Lux didn't dwell on it for too long when they were inside, sufficiently distracted by the air conditioning. She was only brought back to attention when another maid intercepted Katarina, handing her a pale envelope with a black wax seal that Lux thought might have been in the shape of a rose. Katarina handled it like it was venomous, or about to explode, and she kept it clutched tightly in one of her hands as she led Lux back up the stairs and to her office. Lux followed slowly, not actually sure if Katarina wanted her to, and had her fears eased some when Katarina left the door to the office open for her. Lux closed it quietly behind herself, going to stand in her customary spot in the corner, and Katarina finally pulled out the letter again. She frowned at the inoffensive paper, and as if she were resigning herself to a great deal of pain, reluctantly tore it open.

Her frown didn't increase dramatically, and she sighed a lot, which made Lux think she already knew what the letter was going to say before she opened it. When she'd finished reading over it twice, she folded it back up carefully and pulled open the same drawer at her feet as before, only instead of her journal she extracted a pad of paper that had Noxus' symbol lightly watermarked across its front. She only wrote a few sentences and signed it with flourish, pulling an envelope from somewhere inside the desk and sealing it with wax much like the letter she received, only with a red Du Couteau crest instead of the inky rose.

Lux had to admit that by now, she was pretty curious. She didn't recognize the rose as a crest belonging to any of the noble families living in Noxus, and it wasn't the symbol for Noxus itself, which made Lux think that it wasn't from High Command. If it was neither of those, however, then she was definitely at a loss for who else it could be.

There was a knock at the door before she could consider it for much longer, and Katarina looked up, almost happy to have a distraction.

"Come in."

The door obscured whoever it was for a split second, but it was quickly pushed aside to admit a tall man dressed in a dark, dramatic hood that covered his face and fell all the way to the floor. It was split, Lux realized, almost like the feathers of a bird; each one fit seamlessly together when not in motion, but as the man walked to the chair in front of Katarina's desk they separated with the movement, twirling in an interesting way over his back. He fell into the chair before Lux could stare for too long, and she heard him sigh in exasperation, as if he'd received the same letter as Katarina and came to her office to complain.

"Any news?"

Katarina sounded hopeful now, the letter forgotten as she leaned over the desk. The man -Lux still couldn't tell who it was- put a hand under his hood to rub his eyes, answering in a voice that was much quieter and much deeper than she would have imagined.

"No, and I've been out all night."

Katarina's face fell with barely concealed dismay, although she wiped it off her face quick enough. She slumped back into her chair, frowning at where her hands were folded on the desk.

"I guess I didn't expect anything else… It wasn't a very strong lead, anyway."

"Sorry, Kat."

The man sounded truly apologetic, although Lux wasn't sure for what; she doubted there was something Katarina could have hired the man for that she couldn't do herself, and they spoke much too informal for Lux to really think that was the case. Katarina waved one of her hands like that erased his reason to apologize, whatever it was, and she mumbled quietly.

"Thanks anyway, Talon."

Talon. Now that was a name Lux recognized. It was kept mostly hush-hush around Demacia because Talon was pretty interesting, as far as Noxian assassins went; he was suspected of multiple high-profile assassinations in and out of Noxus which might not have been all too amazing on its own, except that no one in Demacia knew for sure that it was him. He had no signature, no tell-tale sign that someone like Katarina might have. There was also one other small detail.

No one knew what he looked like.

No one in Demacia, at least; Lux went over the slim file that was all the military had on him and that she'd been privy to only a handful of times in her mind, but she was absolutely certain that there was no face to pin with the words. She'd been deployed to the Du Couteau house dozens of times, and their adopted brother had never been there before, so even Lux herself was at a loss. She stood a little straighter, watching the interaction between Talon and Katarina with a renewed interest.

Outwardly, he wasn't as fascinating as she might have imagined.

He was slumped deep in his chair, shoulders sagging in exhaustion, and nothing about him screamed 'deadly assassin' to her, at least. He was thin, as Noxians went, perfectly suited to an assassin who worked solely at night. She wished he would take off the cowl that still covered his face, or at least move a little so that she wasn't only faced with the back of his hood, but Lux wasn't so lucky.

Katarina didn't let the silence stretch for too long; it didn't look like she wanted to talk about whatever Talon was looking for, which Lux was mildly disappointed about, and she gestured to the opened letter in front of her.

"I guess I was expecting this, too."

Her voice sounded incredibly sour, and Talon reached across the desk with one gloved hand to pluck the letter almost delicately off the wood surface. She saw a few slim fingers linger over the wax seal, which she assumed was very important, and continued to pull the letter out of the envelope.

He spent more time reading it than Katarina did, but Lux couldn't read his expression like hers. He replaced the letter when he was finished, tossing it back on the desk like now that he'd read it, it wasn't important anymore.

"That seems…"

For the first time since entering the room, he acknowledged Lux's existence; it was just the slightest tilt of his head in her direction, enough so that the light from one of the windows highlighted the edge of his nose for hardly a second before he turned back to Katarina.

"Personal."

Lux was almost frustrated that he was clearly censoring himself because she was in the room, but she reminded herself that Talon and Katarina and whatever it was that they were doing wasn't her concern.

But it was interesting.

Much more so than Cassiopeia was, and Talon had only been there for all of ten minutes. There was a flicker across Katarina's face as her eyes fell on the letter again-not quite fear, but something very near it.

"I don't think I can ignore it this time."

Talon didn't move to comfort her -Lux doubted Katarina would have wanted him to- but he straightened in his chair, tapping a finger against his leg.

"But anyway."

Katarina snatched the letter off the desk and dropped it into the open drawer by her leg, and kicked it shut with a hollow thump. She waved her hand at the door dismissively.

"You should probably go to sleep, or something. Whatever it is you do."

Talon didn't hesitate; he stood fluidly from his chair, turning to the door so that his cape spun a way that caught Lux's eye again, disappearing as quickly as he'd arrived. Judging from Katarina's expression, Talon's less than polite departure didn't bother her, and she nodded at Lux immediately after.

"I have work to do for the rest of the day; I'm sure you can make yourself useful elsewhere."

She didn't say it unkindly, but Lux was sure it didn't matter to Katarina either way, and with a half-smile, Lux left the room.

Garen walked quickly through the house, his steps heavy and dragging as he made a beeline for his Mother's office. The door was closed, as it always was, and he roughly pushed it open. His mother looked up from her desk, glasses on the edge of her nose and a frown on her brow.

"It's terribly impolite not to knock- I hope this is important."

The tone of her voice suggested that she didn't think it was, but Garen stood his ground, refusing to leave or apologize for his rudeness.

"What did you do to Lux?"

He worded it like it was solely her fault that Lux was so different and strange, and from the smile that curved her lips it appeared he guessed correctly.

"Ah, has she been to see you? She has been ever so excited for your return. I think she-"

"Mother."

He had no patience for her weightless pleasantries. He remembered, quite clearly, that when Lux was young she had a gift. She loved to make pretty rainbows and light where there was none, but that was it. She could never change her appearance, and she was never so subdued and demure and offhand about it.

Garen's mother's mouth twitched in annoyance, but she answered his original question.

"Well, you know she's always been gifted. I took her to the college while you were away. I thought she might be interested. The professors there were very impressed. She's a student now, you know. They say she'll be the best mage this generation has seen."

This was all said with an increasing pride, and ended with her almost gloating to Garen about how well the College of Magic had liked Lux. He had to admit, it was an honor to be noticed so young by such a prestigious organization, but she was only eleven. Couldn't it wait?

"Does Lux like the college? Does she even want to go?"

From the look now gracing his mother's face, Garen guessed that this had been a problem before. Lux had always been stubborn when it came to doing something she didn't like, and many times before Garen joined the Vanguard and left home she'd been pressured by her mother to do something or another that she didn't want to do, but she never reacted like this; she would fight until she got what she wanted. Lux was smarter than most kids her age though, so her 'tantrums' were usually well thought out arguments that would quickly tire out their mother, and ended with Lux getting what she wanted. She never sat quietly and idly by while she was forced to do something she didn't want to. Ever.

"She loves it now. She spends all day at the college and the library. They say she's improved immensely."

Garen shook his head at the roundabout confession, anger distorting his features.

"She should be in elementary school with kids her own age, not in college. It doesn't matter how talented they think she is. This isn't right."

For once his mother didn't answer, just fixed her features into an impassive and expressionless mask and waited for him to finish.

"Promise me you'll stop forcing her to go. She'll go to the college eventually, when she's ready, but she's too young now."

Garen felt more than out of his depth since maybe he wasn't entirely convinced that it was a bad thing for Lux to be going to the college, but he didn't think it was that simple- it rarely was. If his mother had forced Lux into going to the college and pursuing magic when Lux wasn't old enough to decide for herself, it was wrong. Since he had a feeling Lux wasn't going to say anything, he felt obligated to speak on her behalf. His mother smiled warmly then, rising from her padded office chair and laying her glasses on her desk. She put one hand on the back of Garen's head, gently pulling him to her height so that she could place a kiss on his forehead, light as a feather.

"So sweet to worry after her; such a kind older brother. I will look after Luxanna while you are away, and she will go the college only when she is ready. I promise."