Katarina read the letter the moment she received it. Then she read it again and again until every word, every stroke of ink, was committed to memory. Thankfully, she'd been sitting when Talon had knocked on her door because if there was ever a time in her life where she didn't trust her own legs to carry her, it was then.
The first time she read the notice, she was akin to a living corpse, heart frozen in her chest only to be jump started by the shock of what was written next. It didn't matter, though, if it was her first time reading through or her seventeenth. The meaning of the words never changed.
The document opened with an unapologetic 'We regret to inform you.' It hit her like a wave carrying the entire Guardian's Sea, unmerciful and without even a hint of the remorse promised. What a bullshit opening line for a letter addressed to no one in particular, she'd noticed. How many hands did this pass through before it ended up in hers, a speculated lover in a relationship that neither had admitted to being in yet? Not many, she assumed. Riven didn't have any family.
'... Commander Riven Marth of Fury Company,'
Katarina sucked in a shaky breath at the name. So Riven had been promoted to commander.
It was not at all an impossible feat on the front; soldiers drop left and right like rain during war and even leaders were not immune to casualty. Pride swelled for the soldier, stained, however, by hurt that Riven hadn't sent word or invitation to share mirth. Riven, sporting amber eyes lit by a cheeky smile, etched herself into the foreground of Katarina's thoughts, then.
She'd uttered the name a thousand times, had whispered it fluently on the nights she can't forget, but it couldn't have been more foreign in its entirety printed on the off-white parchment.
Katarina didn't need fancy titles to carry her name through the history books; Du Couteau was more than enough.
Katarina Du Couteau's privilege came from the stars and stripes on her father's uniform, but like her, even his surname, inherited by luck of being born into an ancient House, was another rung on the Noxian ladder that Riven didn't have.
Marth, huh?
Riven wasn't important enough to be known by anything but. Not even by Kat.
She lingered on the name a short while longer, knowing what came next but not wanting to get there.
'... ambushed in Coeur Valley,'
No.
'... no survivors.'
No.
That's not right. Read it again.
"Katarina."
Talon's voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut the silence like a falling axe. She glared up at him through stinging eyes, challenging him to speak even as her vision began to blur. She'd forgotten his presence.
To her immediate relief - or future distress - he saved the verbal reassurances for Cassiopeia who, without a doubt, was waiting impatiently just outside her door, and opted to show his condolences via a firm squeeze to her shoulder instead, before disappearing into the shadows.
Alone at last, she struggled to make out the final words. Even when droplets hit the page and distorted the only word, only name, that mattered, she refused to believe she was crying.
'... please accept our most personal regards and deepest sympathies,'
The parchment crumpled in her grip.
More bullshit. She'd seen her father write hundreds of these growing up. Hell, she'd even delivered some of them herself during her days as a High Command lackey.
A Noxian's sympathies only runs as deep as their knife will go.
Her hands trembled with a violent need to tear the parchment right down to its raw materials. She would have, if she hadn't started reading it again.
Not long after there was a knock on her door, curt but delicate.
The visitor didn't wait for permission to enter - knocking was merely a formality for a certain Du Couteau.
"Not now, Cass," Katarina growled, quickly wiping away the wet streaks on her face with the palm of her gloved hand.
Marcus didn't flinch, didn't even look down, when a warning knife made itself home, hilt-up with a third of the blade buried, in the floorboard just inches from his feet.
Katarina flushed with shame.
The knock had been too heavy handed to be her sister. Hell, her sister likely wouldn't even have knocked with this kind of matter at hand. These were things her father had trained her to notice, and she would have, if she hadn't been too busy being a display of weakness.
Marcus remained silent and still. Not knowing what to say, Katarina muttered the apology she'd withheld as well as a curse when another tear rolled unbidden down her cheek.
Her father shook his head almost imperceptibly and closed the door behind him.
"Don't be," he said firmly, mistaking her apology for the thrown dagger as one for her tears.
Between the muttered curses and ungainly efforts to wipe her eyes, Katarina didn't notice her father cross the room until his strong arms wrapped her in a tight, protective embrace.
Marcus stood a whole head taller than her, and his shoulders were almost twice as broad, yet she didn't feel as safe in the general's arms as she did in Riven's. Riven, who barely matched her height.
Not nearly as safe. Not nearly as loved.
"Love is not a weakness," he finished softly, eliciting somewhat of a sob from his eldest daughter. "Did you love her?"
Katarina flinched, caught off guard by the question, and swallowed before nodding lest her voice wavered. Her father had never expressed his approval of their relationship, but there weren't any signs to suggest he opposed it either.
"I could tell," he sighed. "She made you strong… stronger."
She thought, then, of all the dangerous missions she insisted should fall into her hands, of all the times she'd placed safety far, far below excitement, eager to close the undiminishing gap between her and Riven.
She thought of the soldier, amber eyes lifeless, bloody and buried where she fell, and wept, truly wept in her father's arms. Her mind was a tempest of questions. How many men did it take to slay her? What had been the killing blow? Riven's guard was nigh impossible to break. She would know. She had tried more often than not.
In what felt like an eternity later, Katarina's laboured breathing began to stabilize. Marcus stayed with her until it did, wordless lest he induce more grief.
Planting a kiss on her brow, he left her as he found her, yet Katarina had never felt so awfully alone and vulnerable. She hugged herself tighter, the ghost of Riven's embrace her only comfort, and waited for the tears to come again.
They didn't.
If love is not a weakness, she thought, then she'd been strong for too long.