A/N: Hey and welcome. This Fanfiktion is a rework / traslation from my fanfiction series "Royal Game" from the german website. The old version is still up, but it's in german, and well, i wrote it with 16 and it's full of plotholes. I also post this on Ao3.

I'll put a qick content warning here, because doesn't let me tag stuff: There's gonna be death, a lot of it. This is a post-war series, most of the characters have killed and seen death. This story will start to get rather violent at some point. Somebody will lose a limb, people will die, people have PTSD, one of the side characters is a rape victim and it will be discussed at some point.

If you're still here: I hope you enjoy the story! I'm going to post the first few chapters within the next few hours or so, and then I'll update biweekly to monthly, depending on how much time i have in my private life. But I will finish this, there is a finished outline and an ending already. Leave comments, feedback and whatever else, I'm happy about y'all :3

Echoes of the past

If anyone had told Katarina that she had had a sheltered childhood, she would have laughed. How was it even possible to describe learning to kill at the age of ten as 'sheltered'? She knew more ways to fatally injure a human being than she knew ways to dress herself – and Katarina had always cared a lot about how she looked. So when the fragile peace with Ionia had finally shattered with the death of some noble woman whose name Katarina neither knew nor cared about, she had expected to contribute to the war with her daggers, to gift the same death to Ionian soldiers that she had delivered to so many targets of her family before. Until her father had ordered her, Katarina Du Couteau, to work as a messenger exclusively.

She had protested. Of course, she had, although one did not simply disagree with her father. But even when she had finally backed down and accepted her fate, she hadn't been happy – what better way was there to prove herself, her ability, than on a real battlefield? She had wanted to be in the thick of it, to truly fight and kill, to earn the honor she craved. Until she had arrived.

It wasn't the blood that had done it, Katarina would think later. Its hadn't been the death either. Both were things she had seen before. Death was nothing to fear and killing wasn't necessarily wrong – protecting one's home was an honorable cause, after all.

No, the thing that had terrified her to the core was the sheer scale of it all. The horrible efficiency in which soldiers were killed, without having done anything else wrong then just standing in the wrong place, by bombs, grenades, mines, explosions and magic. Stepping on a landmine or not was simply luck, and there was nothing honorable about slowly bleeding to death in the mud that seemed to never truly dry, one's last breathes full of dust. Everyone saying otherwise was either profiting of the war or a fool.

In the months before the war had come to its conclusion, after Demacia had joined Ionia's side of it, the nights had been pure fire, magical and mechanical alike. She remembered the burning catapult ammunition, laser magic and acid, remembered going to sleep and not knowing if she would wake up to see another day of horror. Not knowing if her comrades would. Some of them wouldn't.
Why anybody wanted to become a soldier, and especially why anybody would want to stay a soldier after their first war was entirely beyond her. And yet …

'You are a coward, Katarina'.

Five words, that were haunting her every night, the girl who had originally said them was long dead. She had died from acidic bombardment and an arrow to the head in her arms, was lying in the grave in front of her, a simple stone in an unnamed backyard, because no one held funerals for soldiers without a family name. She had written the girls name on it herself, with white paint, in her own ugly handwriting.
She shouldn't come here so often, Talon had told her, because there was nothing to gain from the pain that she felt here. He had said it would just bring back the memories, as if they wouldn't haunt her anyways, vivid and colorful. As if Katarina could ever forget the smell of acid on human skin, the blunt impact of the arrow in the girl's head, the way her body suddenly had been stiller than a human body should be capable to be, the horrible guilt.

Katarina took a deep sip from the bottle she had brought. The whiskey burned down her throat, and for a second she lost herself in the pain of it, for a second she was fourteen again and the grave in front of her was empty, and then her vision cleared and the write letters stared at her again like a silent accusation. Maybe it was one, Katarina wouldn't hold it against the girl. Her death had been Katarina's fault after all. Maybe Katarina didn't even deserve to come here, to pull strength from the memories, to desperately search for the forgiveness she would never be able to grant herself.

Katarina sat down on the ground and unfolded the paper she had brought here with her. It was a summon to Demacia, a formal invitation addressed to her and her father from the family Crownguard, with a note from her father, that they would be going. She knew what this was about, how could she not. The Crownguards had a son her age, they were nearly royalty in Demacia, second only to the Royal family themselves. Similar to the Du Couteaus, in fact.
There had been negotiations about starting the trade with Demacia again for months, the end of the war lying four years in the past now. Demacia, however, had wanted something to cement the peace, and Pieter Crownguard hat promptly proposed the idea of one of the Crownguard daughters marrying his son Garen.

Marcus Du Couteau had been vehemently against it initially, but something – and Katarina had a pretty good idea what – seemed to have changed his opinion, if this letter was anything to go by. Not that either of them had had a choice in the first place, she thought bitterly. Not since what happened eight years ago.

She took another sip of her bottle and stared at the grave again. The girl had been right, she was a coward. Too afraid to stand on the battlefield, and to afraid to marry someone to prevent herself from having to stand on that same battlefield again. To afraid to face Garen and Luxanna Crownguard. She had met Garen once after the war, and it had been easy to ignore that she had seen him on the battlefield, because if the man has his sword sheathed he seemed to be a boring guys who liked to talk about politics and tactics. And Luxanna, well … another sip of Whiskey, and she forced her thoughts away from the Crownguard daughter. This arrangement wasn't about her anyways, so there wasn't any use in thinking about Lux.

It was weird, Katarina thought, how much she worried about the question if she would be able to marry Garen Crownguard, if no matter its answer it would happen. Maybe asking herself that question made her feel better about herself, as if she had a choice in the whole matter.

'There always is a choice.'

Katarina pushed away the memory even more violently than the ones about the war. There was no use in thinking about last summer, she didn't need Talon here to tell her. It had never happened, it had been a fantasy, an illusion of normalcy that she had never deserved, and dwelling on unrealistic dreams would only hurt her further in the end.

She leaned back against the gravestone and closed her eyes. If she didn't have a choice, she might as well pretend to have one, she thought. She might as well pretend that she wanted to marry Garen Crownguard. He was an attractive fellow, after all. From the war, she knew he was a force to be reckoned with, he came from old money, and under different circumstances she might have considered him a desirable match. At the single ball she had met him after the war he had been polite and respectful.
"It could be a lot worse, honestly.", she muttered to the grave. "I'm just cowardly, like you said. And maybe I just don't like to be forced into the whole thing, you know? Chances are, Garen doesn't really have a lot of choices here either. I mean, his father proposed the whole thing the second he heard it might be possible, right? And Garen wasn't even present to say no."
The grave didn't answer, of course it didn't. Katarina let out a forced laugh. It came out rough and painful, and sounded dangerously like a sob.

"If you would be here, you would tell me to get my act together, right?", she asked into the silence. "I mean, you died for Noxus, and I can't marry somebody I don't even dislike? You probably think I'm fucking pathetic right now, from wherever you are watching me."
Katarina could imagine her, playfully looking down on her, swatting her over the head with a newspaper and telling her to get up again, because her stamina was pathetic and Katarina would never beat her if she stayed down after just ten failed attempts. The thought made her grin.

"Honestly, you're right. I'm going to marry this guy, and hopefully Noxus is going to stop being such a pathetic shithole when trade picks back up. And who knows, maybe he even looks good under those tons of armor and fancy suits he usually wears?"
Two sips later her bottle whiskey was empty and she was nearly able to imagine that she was truly fourteen again, that she was truly sitting here with the other girl, that there was no grave and no arranged marriage and they were giggling about boys. Deep down she knew she was lying to herself, but the thought was dulled by the dizzying feeling of the alcohol she had drunken, and really, what did it matter if she was lying to herself? She felt better sitting here, pretending that there wasn't a problem.

"Oh, you're here. I've been looking for you for ages. Are you talking to yourself?"
When she looked up, Talon stood in front of her. Of course, it was him, nobody else knew of this place. When he spotted the empty bottle in her hand, he raised on of his eyebrows but the comment Katarina was waiting for didn't came. He probably knew anyways, why she was drinking, and why here.

"Of course not. I'm talking to her."
Katarina nodded in the direction of the grave and Talon sighed, like he was about to scold her for coming here again, but he seemed to bite back his comment on it.

"Marcus told me that I'm to accompany you and him to Demacia for a while. I feel a little uncomfortable in leaving Cass alone, but it's not like her condition has worsened in the last months, so I hope she will be fine.", Talon finally said, without looking at Katarina.
"You know what this summoning is about, right?", she answered, and her voice sounded smooth and unaffected again, not like she had been drinking and talking to the dead mere minutes ago. She was faking, and Talon knew it, but he didn't show that he noticed the change in her voice when she regained control over the mess of emotions that she had been seconds ago, and she was grateful for it.
"You're probably getting engaged to Garen Crownguard."
"Yeah."

For a second no one of them said a word, Katarina locking up her worries deep in her head again and Talon seemingly of the opinion, that everything that needed to be said had been said.
"Well then, let's go?", he asked finally, and Katarina just nodded and got up from the ground, brushing the dry summer grass off her clothes. Before she left the small backyard, she turned around and looked at the grave, the bright white letters on simple stone, and allowed the pained smile to return to her face so a few seconds.

"When I'm coming back, I'll be engaged or even married probably, so it will be a while. See you, Riven."
She waved at the grave before she left, and when Katarina stepped back on the streets, the confident, slightly arrogant smirk had reappeared on her face. She dumped the empty bottle in a garbage bin and followed Talon back home to the Du Couteau villa with sure steps.

'The Du Couteau family will visit us for the weekend'.

Lux was lying in her bed, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. Since her father had said these words in the evening, she was restless, anticipating, as if she was waiting for something to happen. She was trying for hours to sleep now, and found it impossible, the few moments in which she had managed to doze off had been filled with confusing images of a person she had only met once, on the battlefield – Katarina Du Couteau.

She remembered her as a red-haired girl with a haunted look behind a smirk and a nasty scar in her face that looked like it was from the strike of a knife that had originally targeted her eye. Luxanna had nearly killed her back then, when Katarina had attempted to strangle a comrade of hers in the middle of a forest. In fact, Luxanna didn't quite remember why Katarina was still alive at all or how she had escaped – but things like that happened a lot to her lately. Black dots in her memory, whenever Noxus was concerned, gathering to a single pool of blackness concerning last summer. It was a symbol of her failure, her father had said, and she should learn from it, should learn to fail less.
How Lux should learn from a failure she couldn't remember was beyond her, but the healer had said that the memories would probably come back with time. A year had passed, and nothing had changed, and sometimes Lux wondered if maybe, they just wouldn't.

Probably Katarina could fill in that particular black dot, but Lux wasn't really eager on asking the woman how she was still alive. It would be awkward enough to meet her again in peaceful times, even without bringing up the last time they met. Lux knew she could seem quite cold in combat and if she could prevent it somehow, she would prefer Katarina to remember something else about her than how Lux had aimed a laser at her face.
The moon was full enough to light her room up, and Lux wrapped her blanked around herself again, closing her eyes for the probably hundredth time tonight. Immediately Katarina showed up, staring at her, thin wire wrapped around Quinn's neck, and Lux opened her eyes again abruptly, feeling anger rise in her. She wanted to sleep, not watch the same scene from years ago on repeat. Lux got up and put on her slippers, summoned a small ball of light as a provisionally lantern and left her room to visit the small kitchen close to her rooms.

The smell of coffee and a burning candle greeted her, and when Lux stepped into the room, she realized that it was Garen who was sitting on the wooden table, dark bags under his eyes, sipping on a cup of coffee. He looked up when she entered the room and smiled weakly.
"Didn't you went to sleep three hours ago?", he asked, and his voice sounded thick.
"You look horrible. What happened?", Lux answered, ignoring his question, and grabbed the coffee from his hands to take a sip. "Holy crap, that's strong. Maybe you should try sleeping without drinking caffeine before it?"

Garen sighed and rolled his eyes. "You think I haven't tried?", he asked. Lux shrugged and took another sip. "Welcome to the club then, I guess."
"Is it because of the DuCouteaus?", Garen asked, looking at her in a weirdly careful way that made her uncomfortable. For a second Lux thought about lying to him, but she had no reason to.
"I met Katarina back then. Tried to kill her, if I'm honest. Was a shit situation, she was trying to take out Quinn. It was war, and it's the past, you know, and I don't mind, but I'm a little worried it will make tomorrow … well, awkward."
"Oh.", Garen simply answered, avoiding her eyes, and if it was possible, looked even worse that before she had said that.

She got up to search for another cup, because she couldn't just continue to drink Garen's coffee – not that either of them should be consuming caffeine in the middle of the night. Garen was silently staring at his cup while Lux was rummaging through the shelves, and barely reacted when she sat down on the opposite side of the table and gave him a concerned look while pouring some coffee for herself.
It was unnerving to see her brother like this, Lux decided. She knew what Garen could stomach, knew how he could seem unaffected by death and horror, had watched him take command after Noxus had rained down acid on their own troops, while Lux had been worrying that she would have to vomit at the sideway, for god's sake. If something could make her brother look this way … well, she didn't want to think about it.

"Do you know why the DuCouteaus are visiting?", Garen asked finally, breaking the silence, just as Lux had been nearly concerned enough about him to ask him again what was wrong. She shook her head, mouth full of hot coffee. He sighted, staring at the table again – honestly, what was so interesting about the damn table? – and was silent again.
"Do you know -", Lux started to ask him, when he looked up with a strange expression of determination and interrupted her. "I'm going to marry her, probably. Katarina, I mean."

It took Lux every ounce of self-control she had not to spit her coffee over both the table and her brother, and instead she broke down into a coughing fit.
"First of April was three months ago", she choked out when was finally able to breathe again, her eyes still swimming from the pain of hot coffee in her windpipe, "So please tell me that this was the worst joke I've ever had the doubtful honor to witness."
Garen grimaced at her.
"It isn't.", he said, and Lux numbly thought that it was unnecessary, because if it had been a joke, which itself was already highly unlikely because Garen rarely made jokes, he would probably laughing at her right now. Instead he was trying to look amused, but Lux could see the stress and worry behind the mask. Garen had never been particularly good at hiding or faking emotions. Not that she should be talking, she thought darkly, after her own reaction to the news. "Now I'm kind of glad I wasn't eating or drinking anything when father told me earlier, though."

Lux rolled her eyes, without actually being able to be mad at his pathetic excuse for a joke at her expense, not when her brother was looking at her like he might have a nerval breakdown any second.
"Okay, but seriously, why? Did you just say father told you today? What the hell?", she asked, feeling anger at Pieter Crownguard flaring up inside her. Garen took another sip from his own coffee cup – to buy himself some time to think, probably, before he answered.
"Political marriages aren't this uncommon lately. From what I know, Demacia wanted a symbol of peace, after everything, and Noxus agreed.", Garen said, and when he saw Lux' outraged face, he quickly added: "Look, I never expected to choose my own bride, and from what father told me, Marcus DuCouteau agreed just a day ago. There wasn't really a way to tell me earlier. And besides, she's probably a pretty interesting woman. I mean she fought in a war, how many demacian women can say that about themselves?"

'So, she didn't get a choice in this either?', Lux wanted to say, but she didn't. Something about the way that Garen was just okay with marrying somebody his father had picked for him irked her the wrong way, but she knew it was a lost battle – trying to get Garen to admit their father had done something wrong was like trying to turn stone into gold, and she wouldn't pick a fight about principles with her brother.

"I'm a demacian woman who fought in a war.", she pouted instead, in her best, lady-like way, and Garen rolled his eyes.
"Spare me your innocent face. Also, you don't count, you're my sister."
His voice was amused and seemed a little bit lighter – finally, Lux thought. She didn't like him moping. "How dare you not counting the only woman you actually fought in a war with, Garen Crownguard?", she asked with a bright voice, opening her eyes in fake hurt. It forced a chuckle out of Garen, she noted satisfied. Who said that her acting abilities would only be useful as a spy?
"We're talking about my future wife, for god's sake.", her brother groaned, but he didn't really seem annoyed. "Keep looking at me like that and I'll throw this cup at you."
"Don't, it will ruin my dress and you don't want me to be sulking about it all day."

Garen nearly spit out his coffee from laughter at the suggestion that his little sister would care about a stain on her clothing, and Lux grinned at him.
"Well, you wouldn't want your future sister in law to get the wrong impression of you, right? She might think you don't care about your looks."
Lux bit back in her comment about how Katarina had already seen her in full armor, muddy, raged and ready to kill he, but her face seemed to give her away, because Garen murmured a quick "Sorry" and went back to staring at his coffee.

"Its fine. Like I've said that kind of stuff happens when you're a soldier, you know that. You must have met a few people afterwards, too. Pretty sure that that demacian general, Darius, was at last year's evening gala, and you didn't freak out because you know what he can do with that axe of his either.", Lux sighted, and Garen shrugged, obviously not wanting to discuss the way his sister had saved him from making acquaintance with said axe's business end a few years ago.
"Usually they don't marry into our family, though.", he remarked, and Lux leaning her head to the side like she was being thoughtful. "What better reason is there to make amends?"
"If you're telling me you've a thing for Darius -", Garen started, and Lux interrupted the sentence with an accurate imitation of vomiting noises.

For a few seconds they stayed like this, Garen laughing again and Lux pretending to vomit into the corner, then shooting him a playfully outraged look – how did he dare suggest she would be attracted to some noxian Muscleman with less braincells than a goldfish anyways? Then she leaned back in her chair, and suddenly she felt extremely tired, as if the playful banter with Garen had somehow released some of the stress from her head and was finally allowing the desperate need for sleep to creep into her consciousness.
"But honestly, Garen. If it makes you feel better, I will apologize to her when I get the chance, okay? If she was as surprised about this whole arrangement as you are, then you're both going to have enough on your plate already, and I promise I won't be the one to make it harder on you."

Garen blinked at her, then his whole posture relaxed. "Thanks, Lux.", he said, surpassing a yawn. She smiled at him.
"Nothing to thank me for. I'd be a pretty shitty sister if I ruined your marriage before it even started, right? But I guess I'll go to sleep now, or I will pass out on this very chair."

"I would carry you; you know?", Garen asked, and Lux rolled her eyes and pushed herself up from her chair.
"You're probably going to need everything you have just to carry yourself, Garen. Honestly, go to bed and get some sleep. I don't know Katarina's taste in men, but I doubt its 'Dudes, who look like they've recently been resurrected from death'."
Garen just groaned at her and she stuck out her tongue, then she turned around and left the room, waving at him as she did.