Act III: Unnatural
Katarina was in a hurry. These days, it seemed that she was always in a hurry. Finding yourself indebted to Jericho Swain was an unforgiving mistake to make. The twisted old fool had become increasingly more paranoid since assuming control of Noxus and the uncomfortable truce with Demacia had only made things worse. Ever since he had ardently filled the seat that had once belonged to Katarina's father – something he was doing only in a metaphorical sense as he was seldom calm enough to actually sit down – he had kept the Noxian high command in a feverish state of alert. They met several times a day, at any ungodly hour that Swain might decide, often just for him to dismiss them instantly in an effort to confuse any 'foreign spies' who might be watching them.
It was to one of these meetings, that Katarina had just been summoned. She shrugged on her worn leather jacket, sighing deeply as she did so. A pale hand ran through her waist length mess of red hair as she slid out of her bedroom door. It clicked quietly shut behind her. She hadn't managed to sleep a wink despite her exhaustion. It had been a restless few hours of tossing and turning under her cotton sheets, a troubled mind was a far better stimulant than any drink or drug and her mind was about as troubled as it got. Her thoughts were like a swarm of agitated bees, swirling and buzzing unbearably around her head, ensuring that any rest was completely impossible.
She took the stairs two at a time, and walked the length of the bleak hallway to her front door, kicking up a cloud of dust from the old threadbare carpet. She had long since grown used to the dust and dirt. Initially she had found the old house quite disgusting, with its dingy, dilapidated rooms, and shabby furniture. Every surface had been covered in a thick hide of dust, and it bore all the usual symptoms of years of neglect and abandonment. She spent so little time actually there that it didn't really matter, but as the weeks had passed she had gradually converted it, inch by laborious inch, into somewhere moderately inhabitable – well, it wasn't outright dangerous anymore at least. She was no longer waking up to find her lungs filled with more dust than a Shuriman desert in any case, she supposed that was something.
It was all part of her punishment. She was not stupid, Swain's great theatrical speech about clemency and solidarity – forgive and forget and all that bullshit – was entirely for the benefit of the council. He would never truly forgive her for failings; he enjoyed lording it over her far too much for that. She would be paying for her great lapse in judgment, for the rest of her miserable life. This old house, the ceaseless increasingly bizarre and irrational orders that had her running around like a dog chasing its own tail, it was just the beginning of Swains torture…As if she had not been paying for it already…every second of every day. Whatever punishment Jericho Swain's mind could come up with, however twisted, however ingeniously cruel, would always pale in insignificance next to the silent screaming of her own shattered heart.
The handle was stiff, groaning in her hand as she pulled the front door open. She grimaced as the wall of muggy, airless heat hit her once more, the height of a Noxian summer in all its glory. A good environment was apparently not one of the perks of living in the engine room of a heaving industrial empire. Katarina longed for the clean, open air back at the institute or even of a battlefield – hell, even at her old home, a few miles north, it wasn't nearly this bad.
She wasn't going back there however, not at least, while her insufferable snake of a sister was still there. At least here she did not have to deal with Cassiopia's venomous tongue…or the haunting memories of her father every time she entered a room. Katarina shook herself vigorously. She had been thinking about her father far too much recently, only Lux had invaded her thoughts more frequently. The two were not entirely unrelated. She shuddered to think what her father, the great General Du Couteau, would have said if he'd have known…The red head stopped herself. That didn't bear thinking about.
It was only because it got caught under the heavy wooden door, that Katarina noticed the crisp white envelope lying on the floor. The pristine white of the parchment made a stark contrast to the grimy carpet. Irritably she bent down and picked it up, ignoring the twinge of complaint from her spine. The small pang of physical pain, threatened to remind her of another, entirely different type of pain. A pain that was far, far worse than any physical pain she had ever known, and she really didn't have the energy to deal with that right now, not again. She carelessly slung the letter to one side, leaving it on a small wooden table. She would look at it, whatever it was, whenever she was free of Swain's latest mad instructions.
She was halfway out of the door when a thought struck her. Only a very select people knew where she was currently living, and even fewer had cause to be writing to her. She sighed with frustration and turned back into the house. It was almost certainly Swain, probably writing to tell her that he'd decided to hold all future meetings upside down, or under water or something to try and stop rats from overhearing them. It was guaranteed to be something ridiculous. He was going to get them all killed with his madness if it was allowed to continue – if not at the hands of their enemies then from sheer exhaustion. She snatched up the letter from the table and left, intending to read whatever Swain deemed, so very important that it could not wait five minutes, on her way to the meeting.
This time she made it to the bottom of the stone steps that led up to her front door, before she stopped again. This time however, there was something different. She froze completely, staring down at the envelope in disbelief; even her heart seemed to have stopped beating. She could not take her eyes of the curled lettering on the front, her own name spiralling elegantly across the parchment. That was not certainly not Swain's writing…she only knew one person who had such beautiful calligraphy but…it was impossible! Surely she must have been mistaken, it must be some horrible joke?
She suddenly felt incredibly exposed, standing there in the open like that, in yellowy afternoon light. She looked furtively up and down the street, clutching the letter tightly in her hands, her hands that were suddenly sweating. There were eyes everywhere she looked, watching her from every shadow, every window, and every tiny crack. She needed to get inside.
Trying as hard as she could to appear casual she spun back around, stumbling slightly as she climbed back up the stone steps. Somehow, infuriatingly, her key didn't seem to fit in the lock, even though it had worked fine thirty seconds ago. She twisted and pushed time and time again and eventually the door clicked open and she fell over the threshold into the musty darkness.
She slammed the door shut behind her, before collapsing heavily backwards against it. For a moment she just stood there – or rather, leant there, in the gloom, breathing heavily. She looked down at the flimsy envelope in her hands through the sheet of her crimson hair that had fallen over her face. She hardly dared to open it.
Taking several exceptionally deep, steadying breaths, she struggled to compose herself. This was fucking ridiculous, it was just a letter for God's sake, it could be anything! Annoyed with herself, she swept her long hair aside so that she could see better, before pulling out a sharp dagger. With care – an unusual level of care given how freely and precisely she could slit a man's throat – she slid the envelope open.
The old house creaked and groaned around her as she placed the empty envelope down on the table. With trembling fingers; she unfurled the single sheet of parchment. A loud gasp of shock escaped her lips and the shadow of a smile appeared on her pale face, her green eyes were wide and flashed with excitement, her heart performed a funny leap within her heaving chest. She had been right, it was actually from her! The fleeting buzz of excitement, and the fuzzy warmth that had accompanied it, disappeared so quickly that the feelings might well have been a figment of her imagination. It was replaced with dismay as, one by one, all the disastrous implications began to pop up in her head.
She lowered the letter having read merely the first line, her arms dropping down against her thighs as she groaned. Her head was flung back, staring up at the peeling ceiling with wild despairing eyes, leaning heavier than ever against the wooden door. Her mind was racing, a thousand different possibilities screaming for her attention and fighting each other to get to the fore front of her mind. What the fuck was she supposed to do? It can't be real? She glanced downwards again at the lines of neatly curling letters before looking sharply away, as though she'd seen something indecent. It was her writing, almost certainly. Unless… it was forged? If it was forgery it was an extremely accurate one. Was it a trap? Swain testing her resolve? She shuddered involuntarily; it seemed exactly like the kind of stunt he would pull.
But what if it was actually Lux…How could she possibly believe a word of what the Demacian said…after how totally she had fallen for it last time. Katarina bit her bottom lip as she remembered her last encounter with the mage…it didn't add up, why would Lux not have just killed her then, she had been utterly at the other woman's mercy, it would have taken but a flick of her lithe wrist…and yet here Katarina was, alive and well – actually, 'Well' might be too strong a word but she was still very much alive. None of this made any sense! She felt the excitement rise through her body once more; did that mean it might be real? The only way to tell was to read it right? Surely there was no harm in just reading it - not because she wanted to obviously, but because she needed to know who it was really from.
Slowly, trembling almost uncontrollably with anticipation, she raised the letter up into the dim light and began to read. And as she read she forgot everything. She forgot all her doubts, all about any plots or conspiracies, about Demacia and Noxus, about where she was, about who she was. In that moment all she knew was swirling black ink on snow white paper, and the words…Lux's words. It was painfully slow progress, what with the gloom of the corridor and Katarina's own quivering hands, but there was something else as well. She didn't want to go quickly. She wanted to savour every last word, to feel every last word. She didn't want it to end.
The further down she read, the harder it became to carry on. For some reason the words appeared to be swimming on the page, blurring and blending into one another. Every word tore at Katarina's fragile heart, so much so that it became hard to breathe. It hurt so much that her body screamed out at her to stop, but she couldn't, she could not tear her eyes away from the page. With every sentence her back slipped a little further down the door, her jacket scraping against the rough wood, until eventually she was sitting in a crumpled heap on the floor, her long legs splayed out in front of her.
It was like she was back at the institute, the two of them sitting together in Lux's room with the pale moonlight dancing all around them. She could almost hear the Golden haired girl's soft, sweet voice. She could almost feel her warm breath as it gently caressed her ear. Katarina delicately brushed her fiery hair backwards behind her ear, and her head tilted ever so slightly, exposing her soft cheek and the slope of her neck. Her hand fell to the carpet, where it stretched out, searching blindly, her fingers curling lightly as they subconsciously probed for a hand to hold, desperate to interlace with slender fingers that were not there.
When she finally finished it was like waking up from a dream, the most amazing dream. She was surprised to find tears filled her eyes, and dark splotches covered the paper. Had she been crying this whole time? Her heart was racing even though she was sitting completely still. She read the last line over and over again - I love you, yours forever – those words pounded in her head like a drumbeat, louder and louder until her head felt like it was about to explode. It was too much, it was all too much. She cried out in an explosion of pure emotion and suddenly she was sobbing uncontrollably, tears flooding relentlessly down her pale skin. The letter gently fluttered to the ground where it settled once more on the dusty carpet, she held her head in her hands, red hair spilling down over her face.
For several minutes she stayed like that, a shaking, spluttering heap at the foot of the front door. It was a relief, after all this time bottling it all up, pouring every ounce of her energy into appearing her usual stoic, emotionless self, all the while wanting nothing more than to scream out in rage and despair. Crying felt wonderful, her mind blissfully clear as she just let it all flood out, she could feel a huge weight lifting from her shoulders. She cried until she couldn't cry anymore, her tears shuddered to a halt as quickly and as suddenly as if someone had turned off a tap. Still snivelling loudly she picked the letter back up from the ground and held it close to her; she tried absent-mindedly to wipe away the worst of her tear stains with her thumb. Her mind was racing again.
What should she do? She was sure now that the letter was from Lux herself. Jericho Swain was many things, but romantic was not one of them. There was no way he could bring himself to write those words without throwing up, let alone compose them. It was Lux, it had to be Lux. The mage's voice was unmistakable, but that only created more questions; was it a trap? It felt real.
Katarina desperately wanted it to be real, but she knew Lux well too well to let herself believe it, her wounds were too fresh to think Lux incapable of such a grand deception. Besides, from everything Lux had confessed during their last battle, the Demacian was in about as much control of her life as Katarina was of her own. Who was to say that Lux hadn't been forced to write the letter! She could be acting on orders, she might be being threatened – Katarina's blood began to boil at the mere idea of it. She stood up and began to pace, the letter clutched to her chest.
That didn't make sense either though. The letter wasn't asking for anything…Surely if it was a Demacian plot they would be trying to wheedle information out of her…or to try and turn her against Noxus. It just didn't seem plausible…which only left one possibility. It was just Lux acting on her own… her friend, her love. It had nothing to do with Noxus or Demacia or any war, and everything to do with her aching heart and her lonely soul. She had to fight back the wave of excitement that she felt building inside her…she still had no idea what to do.
Of course she knew what she was supposed to do. Her duty was to take the letter straight to Swain - it was correspondence from an enemy, anything else could be considered treasonous. The old tactician would surely be eager to discover just how a Demacian had managed to sneak into the centre of Noxus undetected to deliver it.
It would be far worse than that however, there was no doubt he would be very interested, delighted even, when he uncovered the nature of Lux's letter. Katarina could just imagine his sneering patronizing face, his horrible rasping voice as he slowly read the letter aloud to the entire council, him pausing theatrically after every line, maybe laughing, maybe feigning shock – the idea repulsed her.
The notion of Swain reading a single one of Lux's carefully sculpted words, even so much as the name on the envelope, made her skin crawl. It was unthinkable. The letter was so private, so personal, Katarina wanted to lock it away in her heart and never show it to anyone till the day she died. – But that day might come a lot sooner than she had hoped however if she got caught concealing the letter from Swain…
For minutes on end she kept up her senseless patrolling of the corridor, her boots wearing the carpet ever thinner as she swept up and down, locked in an impossible internal debate. She only stopped when a sudden jarring note caused her to almost jump out of her skin. One hand had already flown to her daggers, and her green eyes were narrowed searching for the threat before she realised it was only the clock. The battered old grandfather clock that stood tall in the corner of the kitchen, like some lonesome sentinel. She relaxed, allowing her breathing to steady while the chiming continued, its melancholy song creeping through the old house.
She didn't bother to even glance at it. It probably hadn't told the correct time for decades, certainly it never had since she had moved in, but it reminded her none the less that time was still marching incessantly forwards. It had been some time now since she had been summoned to the meeting and if she didn't turn up soon they would assume something was wrong. That was the last thing she needed, a fucking search party smashing down her front door and finding her in this state.
Wearily she turned and confronted her own tragic reflection. Her own piercing green eyes stared back out of the glass at her, the only colour that truly managed to penetrate the thick layer of grime and dust covering the huge oval mirror that stood before her. It hung on the wall, framed in gnarled, mouldy wood; the ornate carving had worn away. It had probably been pretty once, almost certainly it had been valuable.
The woman in the mirror hunched unapologetically, a defiant sneer on her lips that didn't quite manage to mask the haunted, tortured look on her face. Katarina sighed deeply, she hadn't seen Lux in months and still the golden haired girl could reduce her to this in a matter of minutes. She looked a complete mess. Half-heartedly she raised a hand and patted at her dishevelled hair, she wiped the worst of the tear stains from her cheeks. That would have to do.
For the third time in half an hour, she walked out of her front door, her eyes squinting slightly in the muggy afternoon light. The narrow streets were quiet as she walked, her boots flying automatically along the dusty cobblestone. She still had no idea what she was going to do. She was barely even aware of where she was going, her thoughts becoming more panicked with every step she took. Her hand kept involuntarily rising to her jacket, and patting the pocket where the letter was concealed. She took a strange comfort in running her fingers around its outline, it was a reminder of the happiest times of her life, a time that now felt so distant she wondered whether the whole thing might have been a dream. The letter was proof that it had not.
She was soon free of the maze of empty side streets and had emerged on to a much wider thorough fare. Here it was far busier, heaving waggons rattled in both directions along the street, their groaning wheels churning up great clouds of dust and dirt through which the shadowy figures of factory workers swam, in and out like ghosts, sliding between the thundering traffic with the casual air of people who had walked these streets their whole lives.
The closing bell approached, its tinny clang would signal the end of another working day but until it did the great mechanized engine of Noxus would not ease up. The factories, warehouses and shops that lined the street were as noisy as ever.
The pavements were little safer than the roads themselves. People hurried back and forth with strained looks on their sweaty, soot blackened faces, urgently trying to finish their tasks before the end of their shifts. They were watched merrily by a second group, those early arriving contingent of the evening workforce. They were distinctly more relaxed than their counterparts, milling around in packs outside the factory gates, chatting laughing and smoking before their own shifts began. Katarina kept her eyes down as she walked, dodging instinctively along the pavement, her mind never leaving her thoughts.
Was she really about to just hand the letter over to Swain? There would be no turning back if she did, it would be like closing a door on that entire, messy, painful, wonderful, chapter of her life. Noxus had to come first. Her whole life had been in service of Noxus, it was who she was - Strength above all! – She would be a fool to throw that all away for…for what? So she could cling to some impossible fantasy? So that she could prove that it hadn't all been a dream? Lux was gone, the letter had made that much painfully clear, she needed to let go of all this shit, once and for all!
Lux was gone. -"I know that I will never see you again. I have made my peace with that. I'm leaving today, a boat is leaving at dusk and I will be on it."- She was never going to see her again. Those few words terrified Katarina more than anything she had ever known – far more than Jericho Swain! The thought of never seeing Lux again, her golden hair, her golden smile, never hearing her soothing her voice, it physically hurt. She was catching a boat. Where from? Where was she going?
Katarina moved steadily north, gradually leaving the industrial district behind as she neared the centre of Noxus. The world around her became clearer, cleaner, even the air itself. The factories and workhousesgave way to grand, imposing mansions, and large halls. The people walking the streets were better dressed; their clothes were woven from expensive fabrics and spotlessly clean. Their skin was pink and smooth baring no blemishes from years of hard manual labour, most of these people would never have so much as held a hammer. They even held themselves in a different manner, stiff and arrogant.
She was almost there; she could already picture herself crumbling under Swain's penetrating stare as he asked why she was so late. What was she going to say?
"I don't know where I'll go or what I'll do, all I know is I will never look back." Lux was running away, leaving Demacia, leaving her family. Why? Because of her? For her? If she was running away that meant that she would not be using the docks anywhere near Demacia…
The scenery was changing around her again. These were her streets now, as familiar to her as the back of her own hand. Banners of a bloody, Noxian red fluttered from every post and draped down every wall. There were soldiers everywhere, heavily armoured troops of men, metal clanking and glinting as the sun found a gap in the smog. Some of them stood to attention as she passed, others muttered and sniggered amongst themselves, others simply ignored her – not that she was paying attention to any of this anyway. She had fallen so far…the respect that she had worked so hard to earn, the reputation that she had sacrificed so much to build, had all but crumbled to dust. All because she had dared to let herself be happy, because she had let herself feel, because she had let Lux in. There were almost as many as rumours and whispers about her as there were about her sister now.
"You made me who I am and I will never go back." That was certainly fucking true. Lux had fucked everything up, she had ruined her life…Why did she have to be such a two faced bitch! Why did she have to exist? Why did she have to be so lovely? It was hopeless she could be at any dock in Runterra!
Katarina turned onto a street grander than any other, countless rows of identical black stone flagons stretching on into the distance as far as she could see. High stone battlements ran along its flanks, with huge circular towers jutting out at intervals, their tops barely visible in the hazy, heavy air. There were even more Noxian flags, flying proudly everywhere she looked giving the sky itself a bloody pinkish hue, it was like being under the canopy of a crimson rainforest.
The wind that had been distinctly tame thirty seconds earlier was suddenly fierce. It got caught between the high walls and funnelled along the road in a whispering, spiralling frenzy. It whipped at the flags, sending them streaming out in unison, like arrows directing her forwards. The same wind buffeted against her back, almost knocking her off her feet, it tugged at her clothes and her hair flew in every direction, like a nest of irate crimson snakes flailing about her head, hissing and spitting.
Slowly and unsteadily she moved forwards, drawn, almost against her will, ever closer to the mammoth structure that loomed at the end of the road. Ever closer to Jericho Swain…She could feel eyes trained on her from somewhere up above, and squinting against the wind, the sun, and her own thrashing hair she could just about make out the silhouettes of guards, that stood watching her from the battlements. Very soon the council would know she was coming and then it really would be over…
With every step she became less and less sure of herself. With every step her resolve weakened. She could not shake the feeling that she was marching freely into a nightmare. Was she really that weak, that foolish? Was she just going to grin obediently as she handed Swain her own torture weapon, tightening the noose around her own neck, this was insanity! But what choice did she have?
She was close now; her strides carrying her along the long street deceptively fast with the wind at her heels, still moving inexorably forwards, closer and closer. The buildings shadow rushed out to meet her and suddenly everything went icy cold, the summer sun was a distant memory as the fortress swum into detail. It was immense, as though some monstrous black creature from the void had landed in the centre of Noxus. If it hadn't been older than the city itself it could very easily have been some hibernating colossus, gnarled black stone like a scaly hide, twisted spires like hunched limbs, it emanated a cold, cruel power. An age ago it had been the home of a feared warlord, and now with Noxus on the brink of war, it played citadel to one equally cruel, and doubly ruthless.
Katarina was really starting to panic now, and her pace slowed drastically as she approached the fortress. The letter tucked deep in her pocket was no longer a source of comfort, not here. In fact it was quite the opposite; it was like having a ticking bomb thudding against her rib cage, a bomb made from words. Beautiful, volatile, deadly words, that condemned her, at any moment it might explode and tear her world apart at the seams.
There was no way she could hide it. Once she stepped inside, it was over, the letter was as good as Swain's, she could not lie to him, she'd never been able to lie to him. Those piercing black eyes would see through her in an instant. Even standing here now, in the open air, it was almost as though the letter was pulsing in her jacket, glowing red hot against her skin, vibrating violently – was it all in her head, or was there some curse on the fortress to expose deceit and treachery? It took all her strength to fight the sudden urge to rip the letter out and hurl it away into the air, to pray that it was carried far from this place at the mercy of the winds. She was losing her mind.
The road in front of her tapered away, the stone walls pressing in on both sides, strangling the speed out of any would-be invaders approach. The only way forwards was across a single, fairly narrow drawbridge, hewn from some ancient gnarled wood, a sickly greenish grey in colour. After centuries of assault from the elements, it looked like it had no right to still be standing at all, let alone support the weight of an army.
A small company of guards stood at its mouth, silent and alert. A single pair of torches flickered from their brackets high on either side of the road. The dull light glinted in the guards obsidian armour, and the flame traced the edges of their blades. Capes of blood red hung over the right shoulder of each man, hemmed with a heavy silver so that the fabric barely even stirred despite the violence of the wind. The soldiers would have been near invisible without them.
Katarina eyed the guards - her countrymen, her comrades, her subordinates – with poorly disguised distrust, even enmity. Did they know? Her hand discreetly quivered at her waist, brushing lightly against the handle of a blade, her fingers itching with anticipation. How could they possibly know? Her other hand began to travel instinctively up inside her jacket, reaching for the letter but she caught herself at the last moment. This was fucking hopeless, she hadn't even been challenged and she had almost given her secret away – why were they all staring at her like that?
Katarina forced herself to calm down, they weren't staring at anything, not her, and certainly not her pocket – they couldn't be. She couldn't even see their eyes for fucks sake; there wasn't so much as a flicker of life from the black slits in their helmets. She tried hard to compose herself, to arrange her features into her usual sullen mask of utter confidence. She failed miserably; it was all too much, too much noise in her head. Dread took hold of her, sucking the energy from her limbs and the warmth from her heart. She was so very close now. Close to the end.
Why did this feel so much like an ending? The end of what? She would give Swain the letter – she had no choice – and whatever he did, however he tormented her, however painful it got, she would endure. She would endure because that was who she was, just as she always had, and life would go on…Life would go on but she wouldn't be living. She had barely been living these past few months…clinging to the tiniest strand of hope, the flickering warmth of her memories was all that separated her from one of the lifeless metal worker drones they had in Piltover. Only one thing had kept her going. It was love…hopeless and excruciating love. It was all that had kept her human.
This was an ending. If she went through with this madness it would be the end of love; the end of happiness; the end of light. She would be a loyal servant of Noxus, the woman she was meant to be, the woman her father had raised her to be. The Sinister Blade…A dark, empty void stretched out in front of her, it was all she could see. She'd had spent years dancing with death but now her life seemed endless, miserable and pitiless.
She halted altogether, battling against the force of the wind that threatened to make up her mind for her. For an age she stood motionless in the centre of the road, the wind rushing in her ears. What could she do? It was impossible; there was nothing, no other choice.
The thing about running away, the need for secrecy and discretion, was that it left your options desperately limited. It was like trying to hide on a jigsaw board where all but the last few pieces were in place. Those gaps, those black spaces were blindingly obvious, at least to someone with Katarina's training. The absence of information, told her all she needed to know. It would not be hard to track her down…
Katarina was desperate, painfully aware that with every passing second that she stood frozen here, mere paces away from gates to the Immortal Bastion, her choices were dwindling. If she left it much longer it would not matter what she decided anyway. Noxus was her life! Strength above all! It was who she was, so engrained into her very being that turning her back on it now was almost impossible.
Her whole life seemed to flicker before her eyes, unravelling backwards like an old roll of film. She saw the dark uncertainty of her future. She saw her world as it was now, desolate and empty. Those few blissful months, little more than a golden, sparkling speck on her existence. Then she saw the years of fighting, and training, and arguing, the years given over to Noxus, an age of black and red and grey. And then lastly, her childhood and her father…
Her father…What would he tell her to do, what would he say if he could see her now? She raised a hand unwittingly and with her index finger she gently traced the old scar that sliced like a chasm, across her left eye. White hot tears suddenly stung her jade eyes as words spoken long ago echoed around her head. His blade was not the only thing that had left her scarred that day… each of his hateful words, lingered on her soul like a scar of its own, buried deep beneath the surface but every bit as damaging. 'Unnatural'. Katarina was suddenly angry, years of rage and resentment and self-loathing all manifesting within her as cold hard certainty. She had made her decision.
In an instant she had swept around and strode quickly back the way she had come. Her father's disgusted voice was still ringing in her ears, driving her on into the face of the wind. Her flaming hair flew out behind her like a cape, her teeth were gritted resolutely and tears ran freely down her cheeks. Her blood rushed furiously in her veins but as she walked a second voice sounded in her head, quietly at first, but getting louder and stronger with every step until it drowned out her father's hate completely.
"I love you."
And suddenly it wasn't just anger that rushed in her veins; it was relief, and joy. The weight of indecision had been lifted from her shoulders, she felt as though she was flying. The future was crystal clear, illuminated by a dazzling golden light, which left her wondering how she could have ever dreamed of anything else.
"I love you too." She muttered under her breath, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards ever so slightly. The sun had found a crack in the clouds and it tickled the back of her neck as she sped along the black road, away from the soldiers, and the fortress, and from Jericho, fucking, Swain. With every second she left a little more of Noxus behind her.