Welcome back! Thank you for all the reviews and messages, and I'm sorry you had to wait so long.
This chapter was beta read by Swords Divine Light. Go check out her profile at /u/2343391/
Disclaimer: All characters and places mentioned belong to Riot.
Warning: This story includes a lot of bad language (there's Katarina in it, duh). If you feel offended by obscenities, please do not read this chapter.
All Things Considered
Chapter 3: Wanted
Spending more time than necessary in this part of Kaladoun was not exactly what Katarina had planned.
A well-kept cobblestone road led through marshes and small patches of forest for the army and merchants to use, straight from the City of Demacia to the bridge in Kaladoun. The plan was to pass the border and follow the road almost to the city walls, then turn northwards on any of the other roads leading to harbors on the Serpentine River. Board a ferry for a week long and not particularly entertaining journey straight to Freljord. Keep a low profile.
After the assault that night, though, the plan had to be altered. Mostly, the changes involved keeping as far away from the path as possible while still not losing sight of it in the forest, trying not to drown in any of the marshes, radically changing the route or hide in bushes as soon as she heard the neighing of horses and, worst of all, putting up with a certain blonde teen.
The initial plan also involved a bit of rest and sleep. This one had no time for it.
"I can't go on," she heard the Demacian's quiet voice. The sun was peeking over the horizon again, but the night was still cold enough for Katarina to see Lux's breath turn into mist as the blonde sat down on a dry patch of ground. So far, from the moment the Noxian told her she would escort her to a village, the younger girl was silently following her, not questioning any of Katarina's decisions. She finally broke. "I'm too tired to even move."
"Listen," Katarina's voice was hoarse from the chilly, damp air. She was tired as well, but she had trained to survive far more than just that. She walked back to Lux and stood over her, but the Demacian never even lifted her head to look up. "I didn't leave you there as a return of favor, but I won't carry you on my back."
"Return of favor?" Lux brought her knees up to her chin and buried her face in them, muffling the words coming out of her mouth. She was too tired to talk, and she only prayed to the gods that Katarina would just leave her be. She had lost her will. "I guess there's not much of a favor to return now."
"Don't get so butthurt over it," Katarina snarled. "Everybody knew your plan wasn't going to work anyway, but it still distracted the guards long enough to knock them down unnoticed. Stand up and stop being a pussy. There should be a village by that road."
"Why do you insist so much on me getting there?" Lux asked in a bitter tone, still facing her knees. "What's in it for you?"
"You getting back to the Institute," she growled back. The Demacian finally raised her head and looked at Katarina questioningly. "I've had enough of you for a lifetime. Next time I see you, I want it to be on the Summoner's Rift with my dagger stuck in your eye socket."
"You could just leave me here," Lux's gaze hardened. "Or if you want it that much, why don't you just kill me now?"
Before the Demacian could react, Katarina grasped the collar of her shirt and pulled the girl up to her feet with a surprised yelp escaping the blonde's lips.
"If anybody," the Noxian started through her teeth, looking Lux straight in her eyes while still holding her and forcing the blonde to stand on her toes. "If any-fucking-body notices us both missing at the same time, who do you think they would blame for your absence?"
She let go of her so abruptly that Lux almost fell on her butt again, but the Demacian managed to keep her balance.
"They wouldn't link that," she said, massaging her now sore neck. She was beginning to get mad as well and she could feel the heat of blood in her cheeks. "Many other things could happen coincidentally. I could just go on a leave or-"
Katarina snorted.
"The precious little Lady of Luminosity disappears," she started in the most sarcastic voice possible. "Everybody suspects an unannounced leave. Including the walking brainless muscle you call your brother."
"Shut up," Lux growled in a low voice, gritting her teeth. She could get along fine with insults aimed at her, but Garen was to be kept out of it. Katarina looked at her surprised, blinked a few times and then broke into a short laugh.
"Getting belligerent?" she mocked her, pushing one of the blonde's shoulders in an almost playful manner. Lux slapped her hand away. "He must be so fucking proud of you for protecting his good name. Is being an idiot a part of your family tradition or just a Demacian trademark? I wonder if your mother-"
"I said shut up!" Lux jumped at the Noxian again for the second time that night, though it could have already been considered morning. All events of the previous day and night came back in her memory and she felt a flood of emotions she couldn't and wasn't willing to control. She wasn't a helpless girl about to be abandoned in the forest. She wasn't on the verge of crying and begging the gods to return her to the safe, warm bed at the Institute of War. She wasn't about to beg somebody she considered an enemy not to leave her.
She was furious. Her rage reached the boiling point, and she still had to repay Katarina for hitting her before.
The Noxian expected a wild punch to her face so she ducked quickly, only to meet face-first with the knee aiming for her stomach. She stumbled backwards, holding a hand to her lips and smiling as she felt the metallic taste of her own blood in her mouth. A fist fight, she thought. She could go along with that.
Lux was surely not giving up. She stood her ground as Katarina slowly got to her, the younger girl's hands raised protectively to cover her own face in case of an emergency. The Noxian's smile faded and got replaced by an expression the blonde couldn't describe, but had seen quite a few times before. The expression of the Sinister Blade, a champion of the League of Legends, fighting the opponent until they turned into a hedgehog with blades protruding out of their back.
But Summoner's Rift was far away and so was Lux's staff, dropped on the ground a few feet behind her. Katarina noticed it as well and she did something Lux wouldn't expect. The Noxian didn't draw her blades as she aimed back at the blonde, hitting the younger girl's cheek with her open hand far faster than Lux would've thought possible. Lux hissed from the stinging pain and turned her head away on instinct, eyes shut tightly. She felt the heat spreading across the left half of her face and did everything in her might to hold back the tears.
"There's a village or house not more than half a mile away," Katarina's voice came out as a calm contrast to her wicked expression. Lux opened her eyes in surprise to see the older girl standing like nothing had happened at all, with one hand on her hip and the other motioning to the sky. She followed it to see a trail of smoke cutting through the air over the treetops. "Get your shit together and move. I'm not wasting another second with you."
The smoke led them to a rather small village, with only a few buildings along the cobblestone road. The lights were out in most of the houses, which wasn't very surprising considering the early hour, and the smoke was leaving the chimney of what couldn't have been anything other than a tavern. A dog barked somewhere, accompanied by a cockcrow from a coop behind the wooden fence of the tavern.
"Civilization," Lux heard Katarina's sarcastic voice for the first time in fifteen minutes since their fight in the forest. She still couldn't quite decide what exactly happened back there, and she shot nervous glances at the Noxian every now and then. Katarina didn't seem to notice her at all, until she turned to face the blonde, her eyes hidden in the shade of her hood. "Go to the tavern and ask where you are. If you don't come out in three minutes, consider me gone. Got it?"
"Got it," the Demacian muttered in response as she started to walk towards the building, the constant barking accompanying her on the way. She felt an uncomfortable shiver running down her spine, as if something was trying to deter her from the task. The air was still cold and damp, even though the marshes were far behind them now. Lux had never visited villages so far away from the city-state of Demacia; truth be told, spending her childhood and teenage years mostly in Crownguard Manor and then the College of Magic, she had never visited any Demacian villages at all, safe for her one trip to Noxus two years ago. But she was heavily guarded then, and had almost no interaction with the villagers, and she only slept in three taverns on her way. She didn't know how to act now.
She was almost touching the door handle when she felt a firm grip on her shoulder yanking her back.
"What the-!" she started before Katarina put a hand over the Demacian's mouth and hissed just above her ear to silence the girl.
"Shut up," she muttered under her breath, starting off in the opposite direction and leading Lux by her shoulder. "You gotta see something."
Lux didn't ask any questions as she let the older girl steer her towards a small village square. A head peeked through a window from a building closest to them before quickly retreating upon seeing the hooded Noxian's blades where her cloak couldn't cover them.
"This," Katarina pushed Lux towards what the Demacian deemed to be a notice board, and she curiously took a look at it. Then, with her face pale as the piece of parchment she just stared at, she turned around and walked back to the Noxian.
"What do we do now?" she asked in a voice barely over a squeak. She noticed another head peeking through the window of another house. "You think they know?"
"Them?" Katarina motioned her chin towards the villagers and Lux nodded in response. "Not yet. But they must've heard the troops chasing after us. And they know we're outsiders."
People started to get out of their houses, reminding Luxanna of the books she used to read for thrill as a young teenager. These people, clad in old, tattered, grey-scale clothing looked like zombies ready to make a horde and run at them together. And considering zombies always sought out for brains, out of the two of them, Lux would be their only target.
"I suggest we go," the blonde muttered and with no further conversation they started down the cobblestone road, leaving the puzzled villagers behind.
One of them, Stanley, whose family had lived in the peaceful village called Definite End for five generations now, and whose own grandfather helped to raise the walls of the first houses surrounding the village square approached the notice board with his grandson Rob trying to escape his arms. His attention was caught by an arrest warrant that must have been hung overnight. It showed sketchy pictures of Arina and Anna Steelblade, wanted alive for illegal border crossing and assault. He looked down the road to see two figures quickly leaving the peaceful village and then back at the pictures. Arina Steelblade was shown as a hood with a chin and mouth, but Anna looked sort of familiar. Stanley looked down the road again, but the women were gone, and the horizon clear once more.
He had an odd feeling about this.
"Our troops sure work fast these days," Lux started after half an hour of sitting in complete silence. They had run out of the village and into the forest once more, going on until they'd found a hole and sat down in it, sure no chase was able to get them in there.
"Way too fast," the Noxian answered, her eyes closed and head leaning back against the dirt wall. "They've probably hung these posters in every village along the road. We can forget about your papers, Anna."
"At least they didn't get your face."
"They kind of messed up yours, too. Your nose isn't that big."
"Why, of course they did," Lux pouted, insulted. "I didn't intend to show them my face. I got this little idea as we were approaching that bridge."
"Idea?" Katarina opened her eyes and turned her head right to look at Lux in confusion. "What did you do?"
"I'm a light mage," Lux started matter-of-factly. "I worked with the light a bit. Nothing above silly, childish play, but still enough to conceal my real facial features."
"Huh."
Katarina stood up and looked down at the Demacian, who sat just as the older girl did a second ago. The Noxian felt a wave of dizziness and she stepped back, holding a hand to her mouth. Lux opened her eyes and was staring at her with furrowed brows.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine," she answered angrily through gritted teeth, crouching down to reach her bag. She was tired from roaming the marshes the whole night and she needed to rest if she wanted to keep her mind set on the task, and even the rational part of her brain couldn't stop her from the unbelievably risky idea she was about to carry out. Up to this point, she was getting more failures than things done right. And an additional party member was considered the biggest failure.
"Is that a tent?" Katarina almost jumped as she heard Lux's voice again. The teenager was kneeling beside her, helping her pull the thick, greyish fabric out of the redhead's bag. The question didn't need to be answered; Katarina figured Lux had seen a standard military Noxian tent before. It was waterproof and solid, but could be easily folded to hold up no more than a third part of Katarina's bag. Not to mention it camouflaged great in the woods.
"Fold it out," she instructed the Demacian as they'd taken the tent out. "Make sure the inside part is inside."
"I know!" Lux almost shouted irritatedly in the Noxian's direction as the older girl roamed the nearest bushes for branches long and thick enough to support the tent.
Katarina woke up later that day and stepped out of the tent - which was way too small for two people and forced them to sleep disturbingly close - to discover Lux already sitting on a stone and trying to set a fire by smashing two rocks together. The Noxian put a hand to her forehead and breathed deeply, counting to ten.
"What exactly do you think you're doing?" she spat out at eight, not able to keep her temper to the end. Lux jumped a bit in her place upon hearing the Noxian and looked at her with doubt visible in her big blue eyes.
"I'm... setting a fire, I guess?" Lux motioned to a pile of sticks between her spread feet. Katarina sighed as she got to the Demacian, taking the rocks from her.
"These," she started, holding them up for the blonde to see, "are not flints. You might as well try to kindle a fire with your hopes."
She threw the rocks away and crouched in front of the Demacian, looking her in the eyes.
"Don't ever set fire when there's a chase after us, idiot," she said slowly, emphasizing all the keywords. "Unless you want them to find you."
"You think you're really so much smarter than me, don't you?" The Demacian stood up angrily, going over to the tent to retrieve her bag out of it. "We've just had a nap for a couple of hours, which by the way was a brilliant idea of yours. If the chase was so close after us, I assure you, we would have woken up in prison."
"Still not a reason to gain more attention."
"Oh, for the love of gods, just look over the treetops!" the blonde motioned to the cloudy sky. "There's a hundred different trails of smoke around here, people probably live in these woods-"
"Alright!" Katarina put a hand up to silence the younger girl. "Enough. I'll state it simple; if you want to stay with me, you listen to what I say and don't make any stupid decisions of your own."
"Who says I want to stay with you!?"
"Your ass sitting on the rock and patiently waiting for me to wake up!"
They eyed each other for a second, before Katarina turned around to dismantle the tent.
"Alright, so I want to stay with you," Lux started from behind her back, resulting in a smirk appearing on the Noxian's face. "But that's only because I don't know where to go."
"Straight down the road." She laid the fabric flat on the ground and started to fold it neatly. Now, Katarina was not the person who would fold clothes or bed covers, but this was necessary if she wanted the tent to fit in her bag. "You should arrive at your doorstep in Demacia in a week, maybe two."
"But the guards are loo-"
"Tell your parents I said hello."
The Noxian put the folded tent inside her bag before throwing it over her shoulder and tying her cloak. She passed the blonde, making sure to accidentally crash her arm into the younger girl as she did. Jumping out of the hole with no effort, she took a good look around. The path they had followed to get here was easy to detect and she set on to it at a quick pace. She could still make it to Freljord; she'd only have to avoid the towns and villages on the way. Fucking piece of cake.
She was aware of Lux following her - and wasn't the slightest bit surprised she did - despite the girl keeping her distance.
All things considered, getting to Demacia was not as easy as she made it sound.
A/N: Thank you for reading this chapter. Please leave a review if you enjoy the story (or if you think it should be burned in Lux's campfire). Once again, I'm sorry, but this story will not contain a Lux/Katarina pairing, though (as a fellow shipper myself), a few subtexts might slip in.
Side note: I know Lux doesn't act like the fearless mage we know from the Summoner's Rift; all will be explained... in time.