Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When the Noxians broke their forward line, Jarvan was fairly sure that he would die. It wasn’t an entirely unwelcome thought. Death had only begun to feel tangible to him a year before, when a sickness explained away as ‘age’ swept his grandfather into the abyss. Before then, it seemed as if loss only affected other people. Soldiers died in battle, and were honored accordingly. Funerals would come to pass for ancient members of even older noble houses and, though he would attend them as required, they were distant affairs, degrees of separation shielding him from all but the sight of grieving families.

His grandfather’s passing was a unique ordeal - the late King’s death was not just for his family to mourn, it did not belong to them. His loss was the nation’s, and also his father’s rise, a coronation quickly following the funeral and a jarring adjustment made to his own title. Jarvan still, at times, looked for his father when someone addressed ‘the Prince,’ and the whole twisted sequence of events lent him a sick sort of clarity.

Jarvan II had died not plucking his seneschal from the sands of a bloody Noxian arena, or beating back an army from their gates. They were no safer, it seemed, laying in their beds than facing their opponents on the battlefield.

In retrospect, that had been an unbelievably stupid notion. Jarvan’s first clear thought, when he awoke in Noxian custody, was that his father had been right. He was all hindsight, no forethought. He hadn’t thought his position - his physical position on the battlefield or his newly heightened rank - through well enough even to realize that he was a valuable target.

Jarvan woke in Noxian custody and was horrified, more than anything, to find that he had not died in battle.

The crow did absolutely nothing to improve matters.

Consciousness was a fleeting thing. Though he was sure he had not gotten a wink of proper sleep in days, Jarvan had other methods. The old crow - a General, as far as he had gleaned - did not seem overly possessive of his trophy, or else was hoping that a few cheap shots from the infantry could demoralize him into breaking.

But Demacians did not break; Jarvan was more sure of that than of himself. And though he may have been new to war, he was well accustomed to violence. Noxian grunts were a far cry from his childhood sparring partners - they certainly hit harder than Xin Zhao would have ever dared - but they often beat him badly enough, when properly provoked, to let him get some sleep.

Well. To knock him out, in any case. Jarvan was fairly sure that would be the only possible way he could rest in the center of a Noxian army.

The resulting questionable sleeping schedule prompted him to wake naturally in the middle of the night, with a new splitting headache added to his catalogue of injuries. Some unlucky recruits were still milling about, keeping some semblance of watch over the sleeping camp. A young woman - no, a girl, he thought, as if he were much more than a boy himself - stood some way beyond the bars meant to keep him restrained. As if, with the cell unlocked, he might simply stand up and march right back to Demacia alone.

Jarvan sat up with some difficulty, directing his gaze purposefully away from the red-haired girl in favor of glaring at the bars as if to attempt some sort of amateur telekinesis. There were people in Demacia who could bend iron with a simple dash of magic: blacksmiths and jewelers and even the occasional, particularly gifted plumber.

He would have done anything for a plumber, in that moment.

“You won’t escape, you know.”

Perhaps she's a mage, Jarvan thought. Perhaps her power is to amplify migraines.

“I’m sorry,” He said coldly, not deigning to look up, “I must have missed the part of our conversation where I asked for your opinion.” 

“Don’t worry,” The Noxian answered. “It never happened.”

He did look at her then, more surprised by the lack of retaliation than her discourtesy, and promptly scowled, weighing the girl’s careful distance and the youthfulness of her face. She wasn’t a real threat, not at her size or bulk or distance. She was just a teenager.

Nevermind that he was also, technically, a teenager. He had to have at least a year on her, and that meant something, damnit.

“Let’s start over.” He said, feeling ruder by the moment, “Shouldn’t you be in bed by now?”

“Shouldn’t you be at home in a palace somewhere?” She shot back.

“Feel free to take that up with your commander,” Jarvan answered, nose wrinkling as he spoke the word free. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” He looked her directly in the eyes, “I’m very busy.”

He proceeded to do absolutely nothing, unless slowly bleeding from a head wound could constitute a conscious act. He was willing to make that argument, if it came to it.

“It wouldn’t help,” She answered, ignoring the obvious dismissal. “My commander isn’t the one who put you here.”

She grinned and Jarvan felt his stomach turn over. No decent person would look so pleased in the face of another’s misery.

“Don’t let me interrupt you,” She continued, sliding down the wall to sit in the dirt some feet away. “I’m sure your time is very valuable.”

Jarvan sighed as loudly as he could manage before redirecting his attention, again, to the bars in front of his face. There wasn’t really anything he could do to make the girl leave - at least, not while she kept her distance - except ignore her and hope that she’d grow bored.

Within a minute, he was bored instead. He picked idly at an ugly scab along his forearm, trying to recall its specific origin. He probably shouldn’t have - he could almost hear an echo of his father’s chiding tone, ‘don’t fuss with it.’

Well, Jarvan thought, he isn’t here to stop me now.

It had not immediately occured to Jarvan that the visitor might be observing him. It wasn’t until she spoke again that he looked up, only to be startled by the inexplicable fascination in her gaze.

“You’ll just open that up again,” She said, watching Jarvan like a particularly rare species of fish - something exotic and strange, dredged up from its proper home and dropped in a tank for public consumption. “They can do more with it that way.”

He glanced up again, breaking his minute-long pact to not speak to the girl anymore and immediately convincing himself that he was doing so of sound mind and free will.

“If they wanted to ‘do more with it’, wouldn’t they peel the scab off themselves?”

Picking at the wound had been a terrible idea. A small amount of blood had pooled and run over one jagged edge, and Jarvan had no way to mop it up. He momentarily entertained the idea of sucking on the open part, but decided that would be undignified.

A small, mutinous corner of his mind insisted that there wasn’t any part of this that wasn’t undignified. But that wasn’t his doing.

“It bleeds more if you don’t do it for them before they get there,” She said, suspiciously informative. “Harder to keep anything in there if it was just reopened and the blood keeps washing everything out.” She paused. “And it just means you’re doing their job for them. They want you to be hurt.”

With every passing moment, Jarvan became less sure of why he was even entertaining such a discussion.

“Well,” He said dryly, “Perhaps I’ll frustrate them so much by ‘doing their job’ better that they’ll be forced to concede defeat.”

She laughed, full-bodied and surprisingly unmalicious. It evoked a newly-acquired reflex in the Prince: he tensed, leaning nearer to the back of his cage for just the briefest instant. Just until he realized that he wasn’t about to be struck.

“Or you’ll frustrate them into trying to do it better than you can,” She offered, almost merrily. “But if you can survive that…”

“If I can survive that,” He said, recovering quickly, “They’ll have make the statue ten feet higher. When this comes to its inevitable end.”

And then, as if he hadn’t just made a joke at the expense of his own mortality, the potential value of the stranger’s misbegotten decency suddenly occurred to him.

“You don’t have a compress, by any chance, do you?”

He eyed his own forearm critically and prodded at the ragged edge of the wound. A spot of blood transferred onto his fingertip, not particularly noteworthy amidst the dirt.

The Noxian shook her head, shooting him an unmistakably disapproving look.

“Even if I did, I couldn’t give it to you,” She said. “I shouldn’t even be here alone.”

And yet, there she was.

“Do you have siblings?” She asked. “That is how your succession works, right?”

There wouldn’t be any point in appealing to her sense of moral righteousness, Jarvan reasoned. She probably didn’t have one.

He eyed the blood distastefully and finally the scab alone.

“No, I don’t.” He replied simply, half-tempted to leave it all at that. “I have a few older cousins, though.” Much older, and only tangentially related to the ruling line, “…And my mother’s still young enough.” He added reluctantly.

It wasn’t the first time he’d considered it since falling into Noxian hands. In his most self-pitying moments, he conjured up the image of a child born just to replace him, just so that the line could continue on uninterrupted. The fifth of his name.

Even so, he knew it wouldn’t do any good to feel sorry for himself. He glanced up at the girl again, eyes narrowed with the same indignation he’d been using to replace hopelessness, for all this time.

“What do you do here, anyway?” He demanded, irritation mounting in his tone, “You’re too skinny for a footsoldier.”

“You’re too rude for a prince,” She replied, before wincing at her own lame remark while Jarvan rolled his eyes.

“I wouldn’t kill you if I were them,” She said after a pause. “Even if you aren’t Demacia’s only option, I’d think you were too valuable to kill.”

“That would be very reassuring if you had any power whatsoever,” He replied, raising his eyebrows skeptically to let her know exactly how much weight he put on her opinion. “If I were in my father’s place, I wouldn’t trade the welfare of our people for one man.”

He spoke with the confidence of someone who had thought the matter through - who had had lessons, in fact, on risk management and the appropriate things to exchange for prisoners. And, that aside, he wasn’t sure if Demacia would be negotiating at all.

He hoped they were.

He knew they shouldn’t.

She shrugged. “Even if they won’t give anything up for you, that doesn’t mean you’re not worth keeping alive. Or trying to, if you start giving up.”

“Giving up?”

He understood each of her words separately, but took more than a second to link them all together in a comprehensible way. It occurred to Jarvan, in that time, that he had not been trying to stay alive at all, not really. Not in any productive fashion. He had valued spiting his captors over preserving his own welfare at every turn.

It disturbed him for a moment, but not enough to do anything differently. The damned Noxians didn’t need it any easier.

“Do you mean if I meant to end my own life?”

He sounded offended, because he was. If they wanted him dead, Jarvan thought, they were going to have to do the job themselves. He was not about to do anything that remotely resembled cooperation.

“Please. Anything you could kill yourself with, you could kill them with." The Noxian scoffed. "They won’t give you much. Some people just die faster than others, even if they haven’t been hurt much. You don’t seem like the type to give up like that.”

“I don’t think it’s the lifestyle choice you make it out to be,” He said after a moment, resisting a powerful urge to roll his eyes again.

It took a couple extra seconds for the rest of what she said to register - or at least for Jarvan to recognize something that seemed so improbable as to have been imagined.

“And if you intended to give me a compliment,” He said, “I’m fairly sure that’s treason.”

Which was perfectly fine by him. Noxian treason often loosely translated to Demacian heroism.

The girl shot Jarvan a withering look. It did not discourage him in the slightest.

“It’s not treason to say someone else is good,” She said. “If it was, we’d be killing ourselves in battles we can’t win just because we aren’t allowed to admit the other side would beat us.”

“I’m sure we learned from fairly different history books, but is that not what your people have been doing for the better of two centuries?” He grinned, the snide expression drawing attention from the way he tensed up automatically. He had made comments like that before; they were more often met with solid blows than witty retorts.

But she made no move to strike him. She merely shrugged one shoulder, with a look of well, what can you do?

“I said it wasn’t treason, not that people didn’t act like it was. Demacia has its own share of hypocrisy. We all do.”

Jarvan found himself at a loss for what to do with the surprisingly tame Noxian. He leaned forward an inch, regarding her with a raised brow and evident indecision until she looked away.

He hadn’t heard anything, but worried that she did.

“Go ahead,” He said, in the tone of a man still used to dismissing his subordinates, “Don’t stay on my account.”

She grimaced. “It’s not for you,” She said. “But I’m surprised you’d turn down a visitor who just wanted to talk.”

“Given everything you know, did you really expect me to be an enthusiastic conversationalist?” He asked, “Or do you just mean to applaud yourself for not beating me while I can’t retaliate?”

It was a low blow - one for which Jarvan actually felt guilty. He wet his lips and tried again.

“I never turned you down; I heard you, and now I’m asking,” Asking, not ordering; he had pushed his luck enough with this one, as it was, “I’m asking you to leave.”

She looked at him for longer than was comfortable, her expression caught some ways between frustrated and confused. And then she stood, leathers having left no imprint in the packed-down dirt. As if she hadn’t kept him company against standing orders at all.

“Good luck,” She said. It sounded genuine; it sounded almost hopeful.

Jarvan’s throat tightened, and he said nothing back.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t the last time she visited the prisoner, even though it should have been. Katarina slipped into Jarvan’s accommodations again a week later, to much the same effect as the first time; her curiosity on his state sated, she left again, assuming again that she’d never return.

But then they moved him, and they put him under stricter guard – but outside, not inside. She didn’t have much time to watch, but when she made the attempt, she never saw anyone but Swain enter or leave. Ever. And that was different. It couldn’t be whispers of a rescue coming, or she wouldn’t have known where he was at all, so…

In lieu of her original curriculum, Katarina had simply been absorbing all she could from within Noxus’s borders. She wasn’t as good as her brother yet, but she had at least begun to learn some of his tricks at fading from sight; she wasn’t as quick as he was, but she could still run and climb things that weren’t designed for either activity. It was enough to get inside just barely undetected.

Katarina stepped forward, eyes scanning the dark corners for unseen observers. “Hello,” She said, because she couldn’t think of anything else.

“You’re back,” Jarvan said hoarsely, and grimaced before clearing his throat. “You’re probably not supposed to be here.”

Katarina's shrug looked much more noncommittal than she felt.

“No one ever said I couldn’t come.”

Because the relocation, and the increased guard, and the fact that he was the fucking Prince of their most hated rival all screamed it too loudly to be ignored. But no one had told her for sure. Technically.

(‘Technically’ wasn’t enough in Noxus unless you could beat down anyone who would say otherwise. She knew very well that she couldn’t fight the High Command and win.)

“I thought you’d still be alive,” She said, sitting down just out of reach.

Not that he could move much anyway.

“I hadn’t felt like dying,” Jarvan replied, not at all convincingly. “I didn’t think you’d come.” 

“Liar,” She said. “Everyone wants to die where you are. There's nothing wrong with wanting to. You just…” She struggled for an adequate word before deciding to give up. “You just don't do it.”

That was important, she thought. It didn’t matter what you felt; it mattered what you did about it. But life lessons while the student was miserable and half-dead were her father's hobby, not hers, so she left it at that.

She wasn’t sure, exactly, how she felt about how certain she was that the Demacian would be strong enough and stubborn enough to keep breathing. But… she wasn’t expected to delude herself, surely?

“I didn't expect to come either,” Katarina continued. “But I was nearby anyway.”

Because breaking into your superiors’ prison to chat with their most precious victim was to be talked about in the same tone of voice as popping into the shop for some chocolate. Obviously.

“You say that as if it were so easy to stop by.” Jarvan said pointedly. “So what is it, then?” His eyes narrowed.

“Does he want you here? Were you another pawn, after all?”

Swain’s lessons appeared to have backfired in the way that negative reinforcement tended to do in stubborn animals: instead of amending his behavior, Jarvan was content with avoiding the person who had tried to ‘correct’ it. He still had a brain in there, at least. Not that it’d do him much good - at least the stupid ones were better at hoping.

“I don't think anyone wants me here,” She answered. “I didn't exactly ask before coming. But I wouldn't believe anything you said if it was me in there, so I don't know why you'd bother asking.”

Although, some of the ‘staff’ did have a tendency to monologue if prodded. Maybe he had just been hoping she'd start and he'd know for sure. She had never been any good at speeches, though. It wasn’t as if what a person said could ever really be trusted, no matter who it was.

But he was Demacian, she reasoned. Those people liked honesty, right?

“Of course I'm a pawn,” Kat said. She couldn’t mimic the grave inflection he’d put on the word, but had the decency not to mock it. “Everyone is.”

Jarvan scowled, shifting to sit up straighter in his outrage and wincing as it stretched his wounds.

“ Everyone isn’t.” He growled and staggered to his feet, stumbling to grasp the bars with cuffed hands and looking, for all the world, as if he expected to be able to do more than just stand there menacingly.

Katarina snapped to her feet anyway, her hand halfway to a sheath before she remembered the bars. And the Prince’s state. And the myriad of other reasons that she was in no danger from him.

He didn’t look dangerous, not really. Angry, exhausted, and perhaps a little unhinged - but not like much of a threat.

“I am not a pawn.” He snarled, “Do you think this was all part of some brilliantly executed plot? That it all rests on your wretched commander? I had agency too, damn you, I had just as much a part in this as - ”

Jarvan fell silent, cutting the sentence short as if that would unspeak it. He stared down at his knuckles, white around the bars.

Kat stared down the corridor, eyes wide and lips shut tight, listening for any kind of activity outside. But, thankfully for her, his outburst had either gone unnoticed or was dismissed as him snapping at no one. She loosened her posture and looked back at the haggard figure before her.

“Never said you were his, ” She said almost apologetically. “Just that everyone belongs to somebody. Even him.”

She didn’t dare to say his name. Rationally, she knew that it wouldn’t mystically summon him in a cloud of birds and fury, but it was hard to make the thought stick.

The measured response appeared to calm Jarvan. His grip loosened somewhat, shoulders sinking as it did.

“Fine,” He said, and hesitated for a beat, “Then to whom do you belong? Why shouldn’t I suspect you’re his?”

“I'm going to be Darkwill’s,” She said. She tried not to say it the same way someone would say they were going to be entered in gladiatorial combat against the best fighter in Runeterra. It didn’t exactly work.

“I'm still under my father, officially.” And the High Command, unofficially, but Papa still picked out most of her targets from what they gave him; she wouldn’t be fully placed under them for a long time yet.

More likely, with the sudden redirection of her training, she would be given to an unrelated general for a time. Just until she could prove herself outside of her father's name and guidance. She understood that, agreed with it to a degree, but…

But an unrelated general might completely ignore her actual skillset and assign her to something like this . She knew how to cause pain; she knew how to keep someone on this side of death just as well as she knew how to kill them altogether, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t what she was for.

“You can suspect whatever you want, though.” Kat shrugged. “I might end up under him before that.”

Jarvan eased up a bit more, releasing the bars and leaning back on his heels.

“And who is your father, then?”

She was a little surprised he didn’t know already, but perhaps the du Couteau’s traits weren’t as well-known outside of Noxus. Kat wasn’t sure whether or not to be offended.

Probably not, she thought, unless he could recognize other old houses. He was at least looking at her like he was trying to remember - or sizing her up, but it wasn’t as if she'd fight him right now even if the bars were open - so he might have at least known something.

“General Marcus du Couteau,” She answered, allowing her pride in that to touch her voice. Why shouldn't she be proud? “I'd ask yours, but all of Runeterra knows that.”

Jarvan’s laugh was much more pleasant than Kat was expecting, a full sound, low and soft. Of course, what she was expecting was dead silence or a polite chuckle at the best of times, since she generally assumed Demacians to be too dignified for mirth, but… still.

She shook the thought off. Just because she was comfortable thinking of him as human didn’t mean she could afford to dwell on it.

“Yes, well - at times like this, I wish all of Runeterra were a touch more forgetful.” The chain between his wrists clinked as he shifted. “Du Couteau - I’ve actually heard of him.” His tone was neutral. “Your family is nearly as old as the Darkwills, isn't that right?”

“Maybe as old as yours,” She said, pleased at the chance to brag - and at any recognition in the first place. “Definitely older than Noxus, but the records are... unreliable.” War did that.

“Ours might date back further,” He offered, almost smiling, “It’s a shame I can’t look into that for you.”

“Would you tell me something, though? If you don’t belong to Darkwill yet,” He didn’t sound like he entirely believed her, “Why would your father send you here? You’re obviously not trained to be a footsoldier.”

Katarina hesitated. This was exactly the kind of thing she'd been told not to trust - no one outside of her father and (presumably) certain parts of the High Command were meant to know what she was doing in the final stages of her training, let alone where she was going to go for it. Just because the Prince looked like he wasn’t a threat didn’t mean he wouldn’t become one if he made it out alive.

But what part of it wasn’t common knowledge, outside of her father's exact plans for her - the entire language he'd had her learn that sat decaying just behind her tongue before she’d ever had need of it?

She hadn’t let herself react in front of anyone else, but she resented it all. And it wasn’t as though Jarvan would want to report to her superiors on something that wasn’t even technically disloyalty.

Who was he going to talk to, if not her?

“I was supposed to finish my training elsewhere,” She said. “My father arranged for a teacher to take me in in Ionia, so it'd be out of the way, but…”

Instantly, Kat felt as though she had done something wrong, but nothing happened. No one burst through the door to catch her in the act. She bit the inside of her cheek.

“There's no point learning subterfuge when you're already in a warzone.”

He didn’t give her an immediate response, mulling the words over in silence for long seconds. Then he smiled hollowly, something strangely understanding flickering in his gaze.

“Well,” He began, “Once General DuCouteau passes you off, you’ll know exactly where to direct your complaints. That is, unless even you Noxians are laying the blame for Ionia at our feet.”

She frowned, caught at a loss.

“Why would I blame Demacia for Darkwill invading somewhere else?” She asked, puzzled.

She wasn’t sure, she realized, the exact implications of Jarvan being there. His capture, she understood. His value, she especially did. She remembered some details of the fight that led him here, but… come to think of it, that was all.

But asking, she thought, would only show her ignorance. He wouldn't exactly want to go into his country's politics with her anyway.

And, besides, she didn’t want to dwell on anything she couldn’t change.

Jarvan shifted uneasily, sizing her up again before letting out a heavy sigh.

“Damn if I know.” He said, “But it’s become a common theme - almost as if we can’t claim to uphold justice universally without universal power.”

There was something else waiting just under the surface there, probably some tedious speech about honor and justice and the Demacian way. Katarina couldn’t keep from rolling her eyes - she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Demacian justice was the absolute definition of the word, just like she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Noxian strength was the only true kind - but she knew better than to start an argument. For all she knew, he was being facetious himself.

“Honestly, I don’t mean to be rude, but I was tired enough when you came in here.” He said, instead of launching into a lecture.

Thank the gods.

“Never thought I'd ever be able to put someone to sleep,” She said dryly. “I should probably be home, anyway.”

She straightened up. “I'll see you later,” She said.

“Don’t be a stranger.” He replied, almost as if he meant it.

Chapter Text

In the weeks that followed, Jarvan decided that he wanted to be remembered as resolute. Whether or not it was true, whether or not he had eventually cracked under the pressure of the Noxians’ game, he hated the idea of dying as a coward more than that of death itself.

And he was fairly certain that he would die.

Swain didn’t make it obvious, but his army had begun to move again, making its way out of contested territory, and the old crow’s interest waned as if he had already won.

He may have already won. An increasingly mutinous part of Jarvan was willing to concede that much - the same part that had eventually crumbled under the weight of too much pain, of too many beaks and claws. The part that had sunk low enough in fear to, obliging his captor’s wishes, learn the Noxian words for please and other pleas. The part that had urged him to stop fighting, if that would help him to survive.

In the increasingly lengthy hours between tortures, he daydreamed about escaping. It was entirely unlikely, but that was what made it a dream: not so much something to hope for as a way to occupy his mind. It was less tiring to dream than to wallow in self-pity, and at least if he spent his time imagining a decent end to all of this, he wouldn’t have to think about what his father must have been feeling.

He stirred from one such reverie when the du Couteau girl slipped into his prison again, lifting his head up from arms crusted over with scabs and running a hand through his untrimmed beard in a vain attempt to tidy it.

“Are you back to say goodbye?” His voice came in a croak, brow pulling up with something almost like humor.

It had to be a joke. He couldn’t be done like this, his life couldn’t be over before he’d had any opportunity to live it. He couldn’t die at eighteen.

The Noxian’s face was carefully neutral as she stepped forward, even as she crouched down to meet him at eye level. He would ordinarily have stood to recieve her. It felt like too much effort now.

“Why would I do that?” She asked. “Tired of me already?”

He met her eyes without hesitation and stared for a few seconds before opting to respond. She didn’t seem to know anything - and besides, he doubted she could confirm his hunch even if she wanted to.

“I think the cripple has gotten bored of me.” It was a low blow - a petty, unnecessary disrespect - which was exactly why he landed it. Pettiness was his last remaining weapon, his final arm when he could scarcely find the strength to lift his own. “And we’ve started to move again. What do you think that means?”

He uncurled only a little, baring legs as ravaged as his arms and a markedly slighter frame than he’d arrived with. He rested his elbows on his knees and looked at her dead-on.

“I think it means they're tired of carting you around and want to put you somewhere with better walls,” She said. Perhaps she had meant it to be reassuring, but the words seemed to manifest as a physical knot in Jarvan’s throat. Oddly, she did not look any happier for it.

“The last I heard of anyone organizing an escape from Noxian imprisonment,” He coughed, a futile attempt to force weakness out of his voice, “Was over ten years ago - my grandfather’s mission. And even he didn’t begin it on the inside.”

She didn’t look nearly as pleased as she should, he realized. His capture was a major victory for Noxus - shouldn’t there have been at least some jubilation? Some smugness? Some carefully-buried hint of satisfaction?

He looked at her, forlorn, searching for the pride he had expected to see in any Noxian. Finding none of it, he sighed, tipping his head forward to run a dirty hand through equally filthy hair and trying not to think too hard about the sting threatening his eyes.

“There are still people on the outside,” She said, tone oddly restrained. “Demacia can't just let you go.”

She looked away, aware, perhaps, of just how false her reassurance sounded.

“Are you,” He watched in disbelief, leaning forward before he could think better of it, “You’re worried for me, aren’t you?”

He swallowed hard, heart pounding, head throbbing.

“You don’t want me to be here.”

The idea didn’t become real until he spoke it aloud, and then there wasn’t any way to take it back. He wrung his hands, blank-faced as he stared down at them.

He had never been one for plotting. Perhaps a more calculating man - perhaps his father, in his position, would have been able to do something with this unlikely sympathizer.

He looked up again with a newfound sense of calm. There was a strange sort of vindication in it: in winning over even a single Noxian.

“Demacia might just let me go,” He spoke softly, with dignity, “I am not worth - nothing is worth what my father would have to trade for me.”

“I don't want anyone to be here,” She said, teeth clenched. “You fought, and you lost. Taking it beyond just capturing or killing you there is just…”

She looked almost as tired as he felt.

“I don't think they'd make a deal,” She said finally. “But I don't think they'd leave you behind, either.”

“You have a surprising amount of faith, for a Noxian,” Jarvan replied, lips curling just a little. It was almost reassuring to watch someone else wrestle with the same arguments he had, and to come to the same inevitable conclusion.

He was a dead man. That much was certain. He just hadn’t caught up with it yet.

“I think... I do think that they tried. But my father,” He worried his lip between his teeth, “My father isn’t anything like my grandfather was. He’s a cautious man. I can’t imagine him taking the sort of risks he’d need to do anything but leave me here.”

“It doesn't have to be him!” She shouted and Jarvan flinched. Her gaze flicked back to the tent-flap and he held his tongue. Moments passed in silence as they waited to be caught.

No one came. No voices echoed from outside. But her next words were quieter anyway.

“It doesn't have to be anyone in particular,” She continued in a tight, low tone. “You don't think anyone would go rogue just to try ?”

She rubbed at her face with her hands.

“I don't - ” She couldn’t seem to find the words and relented, falling silent and digging in her pocket instead.

He didn’t understand what she was up to until a bundle of small, thin lockpicks was pressed into his hands. Even then, it took him an extra moment of staring down at them, feeling the warm metal of the tools against his palms and blinking as if he expected them to disappear. It would have surprised him less if they did.

“I don't have anywhere else,” She said, meeting his eyes again.

Jarvan’s mind was somehow blank and racing, all at once.

“Yes, you do,” He said, unfamiliar urgency filling him as he met her eyes again. He hadn’t had power like this in over a month, hadn’t imagined escape but for in his dreams.

“You aren’t a bad person, Lady Du Couteau.”

It was the most respect he’d given any Noxian in his life, but he realized too late that he had never asked for her given name - and hell, if anyone deserved the courtesy, it was her.

He held the small tools carefully and wondered if the entire regiment couldn’t hear how loudly his heart was pounding. It didn’t seem that far-fetched.

“And you’re smart enough to know that one extremely wounded man would be hard-pressed to make it out of this alone.”

He didn’t look away. She had already passed the point of no return, must have already been thinking of what would happen if she were found, and if Demacians and Noxians had a single thing in common, it was their national loyalty.

That didn’t bend, in his experience. It either held firm, or it broke.

Lady Du Couteau shut her eyes.

“I can’t,” She said, voice tight. “I can’t fight an entire army any more than you can. I don’t do suicide missions.” And then, despite her insistence, she continued, “What else would you have me do?”

“What would you have me do?” Jarvan countered, finding the energy with his rush of adrenaline to finally rise to his feet, “You are the one who was trained in subterfuge - what did you imagine I’d be able to accomplish on my own, with nothing but a few lockpicks to my name?”

He stepped forward deliberately, moving with purpose to stand inches from the bars.

“What do you want to come of this, really?” Even in his weakened, wounded state, Jarvan had never sounded so much like a King.

“Did you mean to make a token gesture, or do you want to make history?”

Chapter Text

“Did you mean to make a token gesture, or do you want to make history?”

For several seconds, Katarina couldn’t find it in herself to speak. And then she realized how close it looked to her kneeling before him, and the searing flash of shame and confusion sent her bolting to her feet.

At his full height, Jarvan stood nearly a head above her. It hadn't bothered her before, not once in the dozens of times she’d come here and she should never even have visited him once and if she hadn’t - if she hadn’t -

If she hadn’t, she would never have known that there were Demacians who were worthy of her respect - who may have been worth saving - and she never would have had such a doubt in her head, she would never have felt this twisted obligation to be the one to save him.

‘Strength above all,’ but whose strength? There was nothing of her father’s Noxus in attacking someone when they were chained down and broken already. But apparently there was quite a lot of Darkwill’s Noxus in it. And if Darkwill was supposed to be her commander in the end, what did that mean for her?

What did it mean for Noxus?

“Some history if we both get killed,” Kat snapped, but the venom was pure desperation. She had never had a choice, not once, not one with even the hope of a way out. Having this be the first one sprung on her felt like a vicious joke from something divine and cruel.

She could kill other Noxians. She had done it before. But that had been in defense of the greater country, not as collateral damage for her own defection.

Kat would have said that she didn’t know why she was considering something like this, but she knew. She was done for the moment she made the first move towards helping him. Even if she backed out now, tried to snatch the lockpicks back and run back home, she would always know that she had failed here.

She would never be who she was again.

“I hate you,” She said, but her voice came out devoid of feeling. That was good, she thought. That was better. Emotion would only distract her, make her overthink, and only fools overthought.

“Stay there,” She said, and left.

It took her longer than she wanted, slinking around corners and holding her breath and just barely fading out of sight in time when she had to, but she found a guard’s spare set of armor that looked like it would fit Jarvan’s frankly unreasonable frame. He wouldn’t fool a soul up close, but it would be enough from a distance.

When she entered the tent again, Jarvan was pacing anxiously, but he stopped at the sight of her. An entirely unjustified grin split across his face.

“Does this mean I’d better not get killed?”

Katarina resolved not to look at him, just flattening the leather pieces enough to push them through the bars before getting to work on the lock.

“If you're the only one, I will haunt you,” She said flatly, not looking at his face.

She couldn’t let herself think about this. ( Her father would be so ) she couldn’t let ( her siblings ) she couldn’t let herself think about this.

Kat looked up and wasn’t sure how Jarvan could have still been smiling at a time like this - but at least he appeared to be capable of putting his armor on alone. It was more than she’d have expected from a bloodline-based ruler.

He must just be the exception.

She straightened up as the door swung open and couldn’t think of anything to say. For one precious, wasted second, Jarvan stared at the open door. Then he crossed the threshold silently, and looked to Kat with obviously forced calmness.

“I’ll follow your lead.” He said, palpable relief undercutting his serious tone, “Try not to look so grim - this should make for a very interesting song, if we survive it.”

Katarina wasn’t nearly so enthusiastic. An awful thrill kept taking hold of her at just how reckless this all was, but something always shook it off at the last second.

Like that.

“Assassins don't get songs,” She said. “I don't think these ones will paint me very well, anyway.” The captive prince looking sad and noble, charming the Noxian lady from her post… she could only imagine how she would be portrayed.

She had her reasons. Just because she wasn’t sure of all of them didn’t mean she didn’t have them.

She could kill him now, she thought. She could say she stopped him in the middle of an escape attempt. They would question why she was there at all, but they wouldn't question her loyalty.

But she couldn’t do that.

“Pretend you know where you're going,” She said. She wished she'd thought ahead to the point of fetching guards’ armor for herself, but… oh, well.

Kat took his hand so he at least had a way to keep track of her without his eyesight, and vanished as they stepped outside. Jarvan’s hand tightened briefly around hers, but he squashed his shock well enough a moment later, moving deliberately, with purpose, and mostly appearing to ignore his injuries. It was only half-convincing, but Kat would take that over nothing at all. She considered, at first, leading him on some sort of roundabout path, perhaps mimicking one of the patrols - but patrols didn’t generally travel in singles, and the longer they stayed behind Noxian lines, the more likely someone was to spot him.

She flickered back into view for a split second and her heart tried to vacate her body in hopes of surviving on its own -  but nothing happened; no one saw. Kat grit her teeth and kept going, hoping that she wouldn’t lapse again until she meant to.

She'd never kept stealth up for this long before. Talon might have even been impressed, if not for the cause of it.

Though, come to think of it, Talon. If anyone in her family could have understood something like this, it would have been the one loyal only to their father and not his country.

The further they continued, the more Jarvan was limping - not badly enough to be noticeable right away, but getting increasingly worse. She couldn’t carry him out. She definitely couldn’t do it without getting spotted as something out of the ordinary. But the camp was surrounded by woods, and if they could just make it that far...

Jarvan squeezed her hand. She wasn’t sure what he meant to accomplish with that, but assumed it was just a pained reflex. Or he had felt her shaking and was trying to calm her down, or something.

If that was it, Kat thought, it was an exercise in futility. But she supposed it was nice of him to try, if a little insulting.

They reached the line of trees before anyone looked at him twice. One of the watch - a short woman, her features indistinguishable in the dark - glanced their way. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened, her hand moving towards her weapon.

For all Kat knew, she was only going to say hello and was neither about to sound an alarm or go for her spear. But Katarina was taught only to deal in certainties.

The guard died almost silently, her voicebox slashed through along with her throat.

Kat guided the almost-corpse to the ground. She wanted to apologize, but couldn’t risk the possibility that the woman's spirit would be yanked back and interrogated, or something. Instead, she simply cleaned her blade off on her cloak before continuing to walk.

“Don't run,” She murmured, once she was certain there was only a body behind them. Jarvan obeyed, either too startled or too smart to break pace.

“Thank you. ” It was a polite, understated murmur, a tone reserved for small favors, as if she had held open a door for him to pass. Kat hadn’t expected him to say anything at all, and it made her skin prickle with something that felt like shame, but wasn’t. She forced a chuckle.

“I don't think anyone's ever thanked me for killing before,” She said.

But then, she usually didn’t have witnesses unless instructed to make an impression. And she'd certainly never killed in the defense of anyone specific, just a nebulous concept of Noxus or glory or vengeance.

“Do Demacian assassins get notes? Or do your people do flowers or something?” It felt better to keep the conversation light once they could actually have a little of it.

She didn’t ask him how far he thought he could go, because she knew it wouldn’t be enough anyway. They'd go until at least one of them fell and they'd hope it would take the army too long to find them before they started moving again.

“I don’t think... we have assassins, exactly.” He said, giving away the reason for his overly hushed tone. His voice was strained with pain - a familiar sound, one she immediately recognized - and breath heavier than it should have been for just taking a walk.  “But it felt rude to say nothing.”

Kat rolled her eyes.

“Everyone has assassins,” She said. “Yours must just go by a different name.”

It was strange, to think of the next person in line for a godsdamned throne to not be as intimately familiar with her line of work as any general in the Noxian army. She looked over at him curiously. He was neither stupid nor entirely innocent of the darker side of government, or he wouldn't have survived Swain as long as he did, but he seemed so genuinely at a loss there.

She couldn’t be the first assassin he'd met. Could she?

“Use me as a crutch if you want,” She said, noticing the first breaks in his pace. “If you get found, we both die. And I'm not going down like that.”

He hesitated, but then a slight dip in the grass threatened to blow their entire operation.

“We should have stolen that bastard ’s cane,” He muttered, slinging an arm over Katarina’s shoulders. He was lighter than she expected. It wasn’t exactly a good sign, but she'd definitely take it; better to be successfully limping a worryingly thin man along than unsuccessfully dragging a well-fed one.

“At least it might have,” He coughed, “Slowed down the pursuit a bit.”

She snorted.

“He'd just have someone else chase you instead,” She said. “He's good at that.”

Jarvan huffed out a breathy laugh, moving a bit easier with half of his weight on Kat, “I’d think he’d - hah - at least have to fight his own battles, to get to - ”

He cut off abruptly at the sound of heavy footsteps in the woods, shoulders drawing up and back, tensing and standing as best he could on his own two feet. He reached for a weapon that he obviously didn’t have and, in its absence, looked frantically to Katarina.

Chapter Text

The man who emerged from the treeline was easily as broad as a tree-trunk himself, his size made all the more unreasonable by pauldrons that nearly doubled the width of his shoulders. Garen had drawn his blade by the time the Noxians could spot him in the darkness, brandishing an ornate broadsword that suffered from the same sizing phenomenon as his pauldrons.

He was utterly, uncompromisingly Demacian on first sight, and for good reason. He had absolutely no intentions of concealing his identity once seen, and marched determinately towards the two particularly unlucky Noxians before him, jaw set as though he’d already determined their fate.

After all, he had.

Until one of them said his name.

“Garen?” Jarvan released his companion and stumbled forward, making it all of two steps before he had to stop and wince. “How did you - is it really you?”

It could not have been anyone but Jarvan. This was a man he’d known since childhood, whose features he would have recognized at every stage of their evolution over more than a dozen years. A man who, now, looked weaker than he’d been at the age of five, and thinner than he’d become during even the most sudden growth spurts of his youth.

He’d seen stranger apparitions in uncharted land before, particularly where the earth hummed with magic as untamed as that which he felt growling underfoot. But this was Jarvan.

“I should be asking you,” Garen answered, sheathing his blade and straightening up from a half-step he'd taken just in case the Prince was about to fall. “There's something wrong with these woods.”

The Noxian rolled her eyes, and then something more visceral passed through them. The animal panic Garen saw there sent his hand back immediately to his blade.

“I should go,” she said.

Jarvan whirled around. Something twisted in Garen’s chest but he ignored it, training his attention on the potentially murderous Noxian in their company.

(Every Noxian was potentially murderous, after all.)

“What?” Jarvan gaped, incredulous. “Don’t be ridiculous! You can’t go back to them.”

And just like that, he’d taken her hand.

She glanced at Garen before her eyes flicked back to Jarvan’s. He tried to reassure himself that she could not feasibly draw a weapon while holding hands with the Prince, and then clamped down on a horrified reflex at the thought of a Noxian holding hands with his Prince.

“My family - ” she began, and stopped short. After a moment, she started over. “If he's here to rescue you, I don't need to be.”

Garen frowned. Of all the ways to interpret the Noxian’s presence here, he would have sooner bet on ‘inexplicable victim of blackmail’ than ‘willing rescuer.’

“A friend?” he asked Jarvan, cautiously.

“That’s putting it very mildly,” Jarvan answered, barely looking back.

“I asked you what you wanted once already,” he said, redirecting his attention to his companion. “Do you really think it’s wise to turn back now? Can you be sure no one will realize you were gone?”

Garen felt even worse about the prospect of a reluctant Noxian ally than a fully committed one. He pushed the thought away, though, and reminded himself that he was, technically, outranked.

More importantly, he wasn’t willing to jeopardize anything where Jarvan was concerned. Sending a Noxian back to warn the enemy of his absence - if it hadn’t already been noticed - would have done exactly that.

“Could you go straight to Noxus, if you were me?” the Noxian asked.

Jarvan hesitated.

“If I had seen what you have?” His gaze flicked briefly downwards, “I don’t know. But I couldn't possibly go back home.

“You don’t have to become a formal citizen to come with us, you know. The only choice you have to make right now is whether you want to accompany me out of Noxian land, or pretend you didn’t have a part in this at all.”

Jarvan’s gaze was unbelievably steady. Despite his misgivings about the entire situation, Garen felt a surge of pride.

“Do you really want to pretend for the rest of your life?”

The Noxian was silent for a while - for long enough to worry Garen, though Jarvan remained resolute. She broke gaze with him for a moment as she came to her conclusion.

“I’m not the best liar,” she said, with a tone of finality.

“Then it's decided.” A grin split across Jarvan’s face, infectious in its sense of pure relief. But the feeling in Garen passed when Jarvan winced, replaced by a powerful (and only narrowly suppressed) urge to lift his friend over his shoulder and physically carry him back to Demacia.

“Garen - I can explain all of this, I swear, but would you just…” With no regard for rank at all, Jarvan entreated, “Just trust me, at least until we’re out of the woods. I wouldn't have made it this far without her.”

Garen shifted uneasily. He thought about how he had no idea who the woman was, or what she wanted, or if leading her straight back to their camp would end in disaster. He thought about how, even with all the precautions they'd taken, she might still have been a trick of whatever wild magic lurked in the woods.

But above all, he thought about how Jarvan was his Prince, even if only recently, and that he was sworn to obey, even if Jarvan himself seemed to have forgotten. So he bowed. He wouldn’t do Jarvan the disservice of defying him in present company.

“Do you need me to bring the others here?”

Jarvan frowned, for some reason, but Garen could not afford to worry about that mystery yet.

“No - better that we regroup and leave at once. I can still walk.”

The Noxian glanced at Jarvan skeptically but made no argument, shifting slightly closer to his side in a way that she, no doubt, thought was subtle.

“How far?” she asked, addressing Garen directly for the first time.

He looked to Jarvan without any attempt at subtlety before he deigned to answer. Jarvan’s nod was much less perceptible - quick and careful, as if he were worried about offending the woman.

Garen was beginning to wonder if so much time among the Noxians might have rattled Jarvan’s brain.

“About a quarter mile.” He gave the least detailed answer he could offer without inspiring offense out of Jarvan; it may have been some time since they’d seen each other but, by god, he still knew how to keep his oldest friend’s temper under wraps.

If they had been alone, Garen might have explained how the Vanguard had fanned out to cover this much ground, but he wasn’t born yesterday. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Jarvan’s judgement, but he did have a healthy respect for the effects of exhaustion and malnourishment on the average human being. It wasn’t Jarvan’s fault that he wasn’t in any position to make snap decisions about who to trust right now. Judging by his staggered step, he could barely make snap decisions about his own mobility, for goodness’ sake.

“I don’t believe you mentioned your name, Miss...?” It didn’t cost him anything to be polite, though the courtesy of Garen’s tone was definitely at odds with the suspicion in his eyes.

Jarvan perked up at his question. Garen assumed he was glad to see him taking the high road.

“Lady,” she corrected, “Katarina du Couteau.”

Garen’s eyebrows temporarily migrated into his hairline. Katarina paused for a moment.

“I already know who you are,” she added.

“Du Couteau?” Garen repeated, staring at Jarvan in a way that would almost look mutinous, if either of them thought he was capable of such a thing. Jarvan, to his credit, did not laugh, but his lips curled up and he tried to mask his mirth by leaning towards Kat as if for support.

It did not fool Garen whatsoever.

“Jarvan -” His tone was half-exasperation, half-disbelief, and Jarvan did not appear moved by it at all. If anything, the damn fool was smug. “We’ll have to talk about this, once we’ve regrouped.”

“Alright, very well...” Jarvan said, sounding suddenly downtrodden. “If I make it that far, we can discuss it.”

It was probably meant to be a joke. Garen stared at him, visibly horrified, regardless.

Katarina rolled her eyes again and insinuated herself underneath Jarvan’s arm, essentially forcing him to use her as a crutch. That, at least, was one part of this scheme Garen could support.

“Not who you were expecting?” she asked dryly.

“No,” he confirmed, curt. “Won’t your father be worried, Lady du Couteau?”

Jarvan was watching him all the while, even as he let a good deal of his weight rest on Katarina. He looked worried, and Garen... well, Garen wasn’t willing to assuage that so easily. It was right for him to be concerned. The situation was concerning.

“He raised me so he wouldn't have to be,” Katarina said coldly.

Thankfully, that line of thought was cut short as another member of the Vanguard broke through the trees, slowing as he spotted them.

“Captain,” he said, and then seemed to register his company. “Your... Highness?”

It was a fair question. Jarvan had never looked less like himself.

“Under about a pound of dirt,” Jarvan confirmed confidently.

“Douglas,” Garen acknowledged, easing up considerably. His confrontational posturing had been reserved for Katarina, and now that she was decidedly outnumbered, his mind felt more at ease. “It’s a long story, but it seems our Prince could only sit and wait so long.”

His tone may have been respectful, but the way he spoke on Jarvan’s behalf - even under the circumstances - certainly toed the line.

“And this is Katarina du Couteau, the person who released him.” He met the soldier’s eyes meaningfully, choosing each word with care. “If we’re lucky, the Noxians won’t have caught on to his absence yet, but we don’t have all night.”

Jarvan shifted a little, adjusting the arm slung over Katarina’s shoulders, and firmed up when Garen’s gaze shifted to him.

“Your Highness,” he could not keep the fondness from his voice, even speaking formally, “it would be more efficient for one of us to carry you.” He would have made the suggestion earlier if it wouldn't have put him at a disadvantage in such close proximity to a Noxian. With Douglas at their side, he was confident that they would be safe.

Jarvan hesitated, but ultimately slipped his arm off of Kat’s shoulders to stand unsteadily on his own feet.

“As long as you leave it out of the stories,” he grumbled, Garen’s heart warming at the thought.

Katarina smiled as Jarvan shuffled forward.

“We'll see how they portray me,” she said. “Then we'll talk.”

Douglas shot her a look that was equal parts startled and distressed. He recognized her surname, no doubt, and that was probably bad enough without the casual repartee. He looked only a bit less tense when Jarvan smiled in response, and stepped forward to help him off his feet.

“Oh, come on,” Jarvan said, pausing only briefly as he was lifted. “She’s allowed to joke. I wouldn't have seen you so soon without her, you know.”

Garen did not look happy about any of this, because he wasn’t. But he made an executive decision to squash the line of discussion before it provoked any of the participants, and cut in decisively.

“We should get moving. The less time spent waiting, the better.”

Chapter Text

The Demacians came prepared.

They had made their camp in a clearing in the woods - deeper than most people felt safe, but also deep enough to keep a fire going without anyone outside realizing that its smoke wasn't a trick of the forest’s magic. The trees around it were unharmed; the soldiers had either diligently gathered enough fallen wood to burn for a while, or brought their own from where the trees weren't hiding anything dangerous. Katarina felt a nameless, wild tension dissipate as soon as she stepped into the firelight; they were warding properly.

She was too tired to be as worried about that as she should have been. And she didn’t have any right to worry about Noxus anymore, besides.

No one noticed her at first. Douglas set Jarvan down and two soldiers descended on him immediately - healers, Katarina guessed, judging by their quiet, efficient concern and the fact that everyone else stayed a few paces away.

She said nothing, hoping that they'd forget to ask. But Garen chose that moment to approach her, glancing pointedly at his allies as he beckoned her further from the center of the fire’s light. Almost immediately, too convenient to be natural, the Vanguard broke into scattered conversation, which melted together into an incomprehensible murmur of Demacian.

It was a calculated move, designed either to set Katarina at ease or provide the illusion of privacy. But trials were usually public, even in Demacia, weren’t they?

“This all feels very convenient, Lady du Couteau.”

Katarina looked at him for just long enough to make the silence uncomfortable.

“I don't care how it feels to you,” she said. “And you wouldn't believe anything I said even if I did.”

“You might be surprised,” Garen replied. “If I’d already decided not to believe you, we wouldn’t be speaking right now.” He clasped his hands loosely together, his relaxed posture a deliberate show of goodwill. “All I want to know - what I’m sure that we all want to know - is why you chose to release him.”

She didn’t owe him an explanation. She didn’t owe him anything at all; she had her reasons and that was it. But just because she was frightened and hurting didn’t mean she had to sabotage whatever protection Jarvan meant to offer her.

(Garen was lying, anyway. He didn’t trust her as far as she could throw him.)

“I was taught to respect strength,” Katarina said. “Not kill it.”

He was silent for a good while, considering her words. They were the truth - an abridged truth, maybe, a truth without the ugly details, but that would have to be good enough for him.

“You were wrong,” Garen said. “I do believe you. I can’t promise the same of the rest of the Vanguard, but they won’t question you so long as we’re all on the same page.”

Katarina narrowed her eyes, but kept herself from scoffing outright.

“And what page is that?” she asked, daring to press her luck. “I'm not delusional enough to think - ”

- that you won't just keep me prisoner as soon as your prince isn't watching, she almost said, cutting off short only when she saw one of the medics approaching.

She thought about giving them some privacy, or whatever, but she was too curious about how badly off Jarvan really was. And, perhaps more importantly, she had no idea where she was meant to be. Kat wanted to stay as close to Jarvan as she could (it felt like the safest option), but she doubted that they'd let her.

So she stayed.

If it bothered Garen, he wasn’t showing it. “What is it, Gregors?”

The medic cleared his throat, shooting Katarina a cursory look before apparently deciding not to question his Captain’s judgement.

“The Prince has a fever,” Gregors began, his tone curt and clear. “The rest is all more or less what we expected. He mentioned receiving some medical attention early on but, with the execution scheduled, it seems the Noxians no longer saw the point.”

“There isn’t nearly as much we can do in the field as we would if we could reliably immobilize him, but we’ve patched up the worst of his wounds for the time being and we can medicate him lightly to suppress the fever. There’s a limit to how much we can do on that front without knocking him out.”

Gregors leveled Garen with a knowing stare.

“The less he exerts himself, the better.” He sounded testy. “I told him that, but it may ring stronger coming from you.”

Garen’s face remained tactfully neutral. Katarina openly rolled her eyes.

“I understand,” Garen said. “I'll be on my way.”

He paused, turned to Katarina, and actually bowed. Something skittered across or possibly underneath her skin.

“Lady du Couteau,” Garen said politely, turning to leave.

She paused, slightly thrown, and followed him anyway.

“If he's being stubborn, I might be able to help,” she said. “And if he needs someone to sit on him to keep him still, it'll hurt less if it's me than if it's you.”

Garen didn’t respond, which was probably for the best.

They followed Gregors to a medical tent. The Noxian armor they had stolen was discarded in a pile on the floor and Jarvan was seated on a low table in the center of the room, peering over the shoulder of a harried medic when they ducked into the small space.

“Surely this tent has a - a maximum capacity of some kind,” Jarvan said, shrinking back behind the medic with something strangely like embarrassment.

He’d looked better with clothes on. More of Jarvan was already bandaged up than not, his arms and legs mostly wound up in white cloth and the right leg bound in place with a straight rod. The medic continued working in spite of his complaint, adding dirty wads of cotton to a pile stained in noxious shades of red and brown.

It wasn’t until they got closer that they could see what he was working at. The wounds on Jarvan’s chest somehow looked more grisly as they were cleaned and irrigated - chunks of flesh just abruptly missing , as if clawed or tugged or torn away. The gauze packed and taped over his back was just barely visible while he leaned forward, climbing up to meet his shoulders.

He looked like he should have been in more pain. But his tight grip on the table’s edge gave away more than anything in his face.

Katarina wasn’t sure what to think about the fact that he’d been more comfortable showing his distress in front of her in his cell than safe with his own people.

“I’m fine,” Jarvan said, unprompted. It was a lot less convincing than if he’d said nothing at all.

Garen opened his mouth, but closed it after a moment without saying anything. Katarina couldn’t blame him.

She hadn’t seen Jarvan while he was being actively tortured, of course, only after it was all over and he’d been (sort of) cleaned up. She’d figured there was more underneath his rags, especially with the pattern of the bloodstains, but the way his chest looked under the half-done bandages tugged worryingly at her memory.

“You look like shit,” she said, before she could stop herself.

Garen shot her a look. She pretended not to notice, slinking over to the far side of the table so as to at least free up some space in the tent for everyone else.

“Your compassion knows no bounds,” Jarvan retorted, which was - well, mean , probably, but she wasn’t the one exposed like this.

“How do you feel, Your Highness?” Garen asked, apparently deciding that the best way to get Katarina to stop talking was simply to carry on the conversation without her.

“It looks worse than it feels, really,” Jarvan lied, ignoring the increasingly skeptical expression of the medical professional in front of him. “I was walking before we found you. Ask Katarina.”

He looked at Katarina, apparently appealing to her better nature. She had no idea why he was so convinced she had one. Katarina glanced at the medic, taking a slow breath as she considered how to respond. On the one hand, she understood the need for grasping at dignity; on the other...

“He had to,” she said, finally. “I wouldn’t have made him if there was another choice.” She shifted her weight, feeling simultaneously like she should be saying more and less than she was. “He did better than most people would.”

(Carrion, she thought suddenly, looking at his shoulders. His deeper injuries looked like someone had just spooked vultures from a carcass.)

Jarvan looked sidelong at Katarina, his expression unreadable. She was the first to look away.

“I’m sorry we didn’t find you sooner,” Garen said. Again, possibly, but Kat couldn’t blame him. Gods knew she’d be guilt-ridden in his place.

(She could have broken him out sooner, too.)

“Gods - ” For all Jarvan had hidden his injury, he was having a hard time doing the same with agitation. “I’m sure you didn’t take the scenic route, Garen, you don’t have to apologize.”

(But she might.)

“I know that I,” Jarvan continued, staring determinately anywhere but at Katarina, “I could have done more. In the interest of self-preservation.”

Her first thought, unfairly quick, was: That’s an understatement.

But… no. He was an idiot; she wasn’t going to dispute that. But hells, for all she knew, maybe that idiocy helped him. He was already staying alive out of spite; maybe that would have been harder for him if he hadn’t tried fueling it at every turn.

“I don’t think you had much control over the situation at the time, highness,” Garen offered, sounding almost affronted at the concept of not taking the blame himself. Katarina sensed a pattern.

“How is the leg, anyway?” she asked, not at all to change the subject.

Jarvan furrowed his brow at Garen, but didn’t reply to him. “It could be worse,” he said instead, setting his attention on Katarina while the medic finally began bandaging his chest. “I’ll be able to walk on it tomorrow.”

Gregors cleared his throat, finally speaking up. Kat had honestly forgotten he was even there.

“We said that you could use the leg if absolutely necessary, Your Highness,” Gregors said, apparently as politely as he could directly contradict the Prince, “Not that we would recommend it.”

“Yes, well - I’m sure we’ll mostly be riding.”

Gregors did not look at Garen, or gesture frustratedly at the Prince, or do any number of other things that would have felt reasonable to Katarina at the time. Instead, he maintained a very level tone and answered placidly. “I wouldn’t characterize that as particularly better.”

Katarina snorted, leaning her hip on the table. “You should be careful,” she said. “I didn’t commit treason just so you can break your legs on the way out.”

The second the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. She - gods, she hadn’t followed Garen in here to stop avoiding what she’d done.

(Which was ridiculous. Childish. It wasn’t as though saying the words out loud made it real.)

Jarvan blinked at her, looking uncomfortably as though he was studying her expression. “Well, technically,” he began - the tone of a man who knew he was about to be admonished - “I couldn’t very well break it again, could I?”

He could. There was a tang in the air from magic-driven regrowth, but it was still fresh, and Kat knew from her own experiences that it was a less than ideal fix.

Katarina looked at Gregors, fully expecting either him or the medic to jump in. Gregors glanced unsubtly up towards the canvas overhead. The medic pretended to still be busy.

Gods, no wonder he was like this.

“You could,” Garen said apologetically, after just slightly too long a pause.

“You can break anything if you’re stupid enough,” Katarina added, because if no one else was willing to be direct with Jarvan then that was just going to have to be her job. Apparently.

Jarvan did not look particularly astonished to be scolded, which made sense. In recent weeks, he’d had worse. (Gregors was more shocked, but didn’t say anything, which was probably for the best.)

“What do you want me to say?” Jarvan huffed, turning halfway towards Kat before the medic corrected his posture to tie off a bandage. “I won’t slow the entire Vanguard down. We aren’t out of the woods yet - Garen, you know that.”

Garen cleared his throat. “We came for you, Your Highness,” he said, reasonably enough. “You couldn’t slow us down.”

Katarina pushed away from the table again to at least remove Jarvan’s temptation to turn around and strain his bandages to look at her while they were talking. “Has he always been like this?” she asked of the room at large.

Jarvan looked at Garen, daring his response. None was forthcoming; he apparently didn’t deem that worthy of an answer.

“...I’m not going to win this, am I?” the Prince asked. Where winning was defined as ‘further endangering himself,’ apparently. “Just tell me. Be honest.”

“You’re going to get home safely,” Garen answered evenly, like he wasn’t being effectively forced to convince his future ruler to take care of himself. “In however much time that takes.”

Katarina rolled her eyes. “You aren’t going to win this,” she confirmed.

Jarvan sighed. The sound seemed to catch slightly, but if it was a wince, it didn’t register on his face.

“ Fine ,” he said, like a child narrowly persuaded to eat his vegetables. “But I still think this is a lot of fuss.”

Chapter Text

Jarvan was very tired, and he couldn’t go back to sleep.

He woke in an awful sweat, disoriented, heart pounding, jolting to sit up and not realizing where he was until his eyes adjusted to the dark. His free hands and fresh clothes should have given it away sooner, but he was too wrapped up in panic to notice.

As the shock faded, he laid back down, closing his eyes and calming enough to recognize the extent of the pain in just about all of his body - stinging in the most recent of his wounds, throbbing in some others, and all amplified by the full-body ache of fever. There wasn’t any point in trying to sleep through it, and he wasn’t about to wake anyone up for need of a painkiller. Not only would it be selfish, but he was sure he didn’t need it.

He’d survived this long, after all. He hadn’t needed it before.

He got up instead, slipping quietly from the tent he shared with Garen (and finding, so long after their many childhood sleepovers, that Garen was as difficult to wake as ever) and striding confidently, bluffing, to the edge of the low-burning fire to sit down. He found two men still awake, taking their turns on the night watch: one pacing around the edge of the camp, and the other stationed dutifully at the tent Katarina had vanished into at some point in the evening.

He sat there for a while, glancing several times at Kat’s designated guard and wondering how far he could push his luck.

Well, hell. He wasn’t Crown Prince for nothing.

“Is she still awake?” Jarvan stopped a scant foot in front of the soldier, keeping his voice low out of nighttime courtesy even though it made him sound weaker.

The guard looked startled by the question. He even paused, as if either of them thought he would dare not to answer. Jarvan waited him out.

“It's difficult to say, Your Highness,” he said quietly. “I haven't heard her move since she sat down, but unless she sleeps in her leathers…”

“Well, then, at least I know she’s decent,” Jarvan replied, saying the words out loud mostly to justify his next move to himself. Summoning all of the confidence his title should have given him, he stepped past the soldier and drew back the flap of the tent just enough to allow himself to peek inside.

(He knew just how indecent this all must have looked, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Maybe it was the fever.)

“Katarina?”

She was decent, at least in that she was still fully clothed. But he caught her rubbing her face with the edge of her cloak, and even in the darkness he could make out the red around her eyes.

She clenched her jaw and didn't look at him. He couldn’t blame her.

“Jarvan,” Kat answered, voice rough and tight with control. “Thought you were supposed to be resting.”

“You should probably be asleep too, you know.” He stepped inside, momentarily regretting the way he’d simply invited himself in and then thinking, well, screw it 

Kat had walked herself up to his cell a dozen times. He was allowed to return the favor at least once.

The canvas fell shut behind him, and he sat down carefully across from Kat, unable to hide the pains he took to keep from agitating his wounds. She either didn’t notice, or didn’t see fit to remark on it.

“Are you alright?” Jarvan asked, like some kind of idiot, and immediately hated himself for it.

“I'm fine,” Kat said stiffly. “You shouldn't be here, even if I wasn't sleeping.”

She looked down at her hands, falling into mournful silence. Jarvan’s chest tightened, but he said nothing, unsure of how to proceed. What could he possibly say to her now? He had talked her into walking away from everything she’d ever known - and dear gods, was that selfish? Would a Demacian moralist study this case some day and conclude that he’d done wrong?

His brief episode of self-pity was interrupted when Katarina shifted and, out of the blue, began to wearily unfasten her topmost pieces of armor.

If Jarvan had had a full night’s sleep, or hadn’t had a fever, he would have obeyed the polite first instinct to avert his eyes, or leave the tent.  Instead, he obeyed a second, undoubtedly stupider impulse.

“...Would you like any help with that?” he asked.

He regretted the question about a second later. Of course she didn’t need help; she was a strong, capable Noxian and would probably take offense to the mere suggestion of assistance. And besides, the armor was leather, not plate - she was much less likely to have any trouble for that fact alone.

It was too late to take it back, though, so he stared up at the canvas and wished silently for death.

Not for the first time that week.

“I think you'd just hurt yourself if you tried,” Kat said, taking an unreasonable amount of pity on him.

Jarvan laughed - a full, honest sound of mixed relief and disbelief.

“Oh, gods - you’re probably right,” he said, muffling a chuckle behind his hand, “I don’t know how I’m still even upright, truth be told.”

He shook his head and realized when he touched his chin that he still desperately needed a shave. He ran his hand through an untidy beard.

“Why were you really up so late, Kat?” Jarvan asked after a moment, lowering his voice.

Kat wrinkled her nose. “Why are you?” she retorted. “I’m surprised they even let you out of bed at all.” She pulled the last of the armor on her torso off and drew her knees up to her chin.

“Garen snores,” he said, hoping the bluntness of the lie would mask it. “But you’re still not answering me.”

He stared at her intently for a moment, but it seemed improper to do so without her armor on - even if leather didn’t actually offer much protection from Demacian judgement. So he averted his gaze downward instead, where it caught on the bandages on his forearm.

He began to fidget with the sealed-off end. On some level, he knew he would be scolded if it came undone, but the worry was so distant that he really couldn’t bring himself to care.

Kat reached out and swatted his fingers away. Startled, he stopped immediately.

“No, I'm not,” she agreed, and huffed out a breath, inspecting her hand. “I'm not plotting your demise or anything. You don't have to worry about it.”

“That’s not what I was worried about,” Jarvan said, frowning. “It wouldn’t make any sense after you went through so much trouble to prevent it.” To avoid being scolded again, Jarvan clasped his hands together against an astounding urge to fidget. He’d never suffered from restlessness before, which made him think the itch might have been something Swain left behind. That was reason enough to fight it.

“Are you having second thoughts?” he pressed.

Katarina bit her tongue. Jarvan wasn’t surprised at her silence - it wasn’t easy, the choice he’d asked her to make. None of this was easy.

“I have a family, Jarvan,” she said finally, her voice very low. She still wouldn't look at him. “Whatever you think of Noxus, they aren't… I wouldn't have even talked to you if I'd been born to anyone else. And if I ever see them again, they'll be under orders to kill me.”

She fell silent, and he could not find the will to speak.

“You'd have second thoughts too,” Kat muttered.

Jarvan nodded. He would, he knew it, and not only for his family but for every Demacian he’d come to know in all his life.

But they weren’t Noxian. They weren’t raised to be bad people, they didn’t hold all the most twisted values, they would never have found themselves in the sort of position Kat is in now.

He told himself that, anyway.  It was easy to be fully convinced of the Demacian high ground, when Noxus had shown no greater interest than taking a battleaxe to the lowest bars set for it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, soft and earnest nonetheless. “I wish that weren’t true, I really do.”

Katarina scoffed wetly. “You got out alive,” she said. “That's all that should matter to you.”

And perhaps, to her, that would have been the case. Perhaps she expected him to do no more than rise above one of those horrendously low bars: to not torment her, or not betray her. Perhaps she thought she was owed nothing more than transactional tolerance.

“I am capable of caring about other people, Kat.” He found himself getting affronted, but quickly shook off the offense. It didn’t have to be about him - not everything was. “As unbelievable it may sound to you, your feelings do matter to me. It’s the least I owe you after what you did.”

Kat shifted uncomfortably, looking suspicious.

“You owe me my life,” she said. “My freedom, however you want to define it. That's all I'm asking of you, anyway.”

“Maybe so,” Jarvan said. “For freeing me, at least. But you did more than that, and I think you know it.”

He glanced down at his hands, drawing in a short breath and trying to pace himself through the next few words.

“You were decent to me. You were the only person I encountered in that regiment who didn’t kick me while I was down, if only for the dubious glory of having kicked a Prince. That is worth something, where I come from.”

“There's nothing to be gained from doing that,” Kat said, uncomfortable. “It won't make me any better with opponents who aren't tied down.” She rubbed her eyes with her hands.

“What is it worth?” she asked, finally.

“Reciprocity, at least.” Empathy, Jarvan thought - but that was really only rationalizing his actions after the fact. He didn’t have to reason his way into being kind to someone.

“I don’t want you to be miserable, Kat. It doesn’t matter what I owe you or what you ask of me, that remains the truth.”

Kat still looked doubtful, but he couldn’t blame her for that. It isn’t as if he would have reacted any differently, if a Noxian approached him like this - hell, a Noxian had, and he’d spent their first few conversations fully expecting cruelty out of her.

“And if your father disagrees with your treatment of me?” she asked, suddenly fascinated by the seams of the tent.

“Then I suppose he’ll have to contend with the consequences of a very public feud with his only heir.” Jarvan had no reservations about vouching for Kat. It would be absolutely ludicrous to do anything but protect her. And he was confident - his father was an intelligent man. Overly analytical, too wound up in politics, nothing like his grandfather had been - but still intelligent. He would know better. He had to.

Kat was, understandably, not as trusting. She gave a flat chuckle, glancing up to meet his eyes. “Better if you just sneak me out of the country,” she said. “For both of us.”

“As long as I’m around, you won’t have to sneak in or out,” he replied, losing no steam at all even as she shrugged off his words. “I wouldn’t let them imprison you - what kind of man would that make me, after all of this?”

Kat narrowed her eyes. “Someone who doesn't have a choice,” she said. “I don't deal in best case scenarios.”

“Contrary to the last few weeks, Kat, I do usually have an abundance of choices.” Jarvan crossed his arms, frowning at what he perceived as little more than pessimism. “I can’t force you to believe me, of course, but - well, at least trust that I will do everything in my power to ensure that you’re treated fairly. Even in a worst case scenario.”

She considered it for a moment, and nodded slowly.

“That's all I want,” she said quietly.

Silence fell. Kat looked outside as if she could quite tell what time it was through the crack of the tent’s opening.

“You should probably go back to sleep before your…” She paused, searching for a word. “...your caretaker wakes up.”

“Oh, I wish I could tell Garen you called him that.” Jarvan snorted, and shook his head at the thought. If it wouldn’t involve admitting he’d been out and about in the middle of the night, he just might have risked it. “You’re right - more importantly, I shouldn’t have kept you up this long.” He glanced at the tent-flap and then briefly back at Kat, looking her over searchingly before apparently finding whatever he’d wanted to see.

“Have a good night, Kat.”

Chapter Text

A week of tireless travel brought them to the farthest western border of Noxus, a stretch of craggy mountainside carved out carefully enough to warrant warring over its divisions, but largely undeveloped for that same reason with the exception of the Institute’s roads. They’d opted to detour around any and all such infrastructure - a wise choice for a cohort avoiding both the Noxian army and any intervening members of the Summoner’s Council.

Once they crossed into neutral territory, they adopted an easier pace, still avoiding routes monitored by the Institute. It took an inordinate amount of time for them to set foot onto Demacian soil indirectly and, even then, it wasn’t obviously Demacian at the outskirts. Katarina wouldn’t have realized that they’d left neutral ground without looking at a map, at least not for the first few miles.

She had never seen Demacia before. Her first time within those borders was meant to have been saved until after she had proven herself against targets that wouldn't cause any international incidents if she should fail. Somehow, she had thought it would be… different. They crossed over the border and the harsh mountains faded into rolling hills, the buildings were built more of wood than stone, but the outskirts of Demacia looked otherwise very much like the outskirts of Noxus.

It bothered her.

The first farm they passed through gave her pause. There was such a thing as a Noxian farmer, as much as the rest of Runeterra might have scoffed at the idea, but none like this. Kat knew vegetable gardens in cellars, growing by magelight. The du Couteau manor had an entire, sprawling room set aside for the purpose of growing food, every bed lined with Piltovian sunlamps, the soil tended to by a garden witch who'd worked for the family for a decade. On the border closer to the sea and farther from the forest, there were occasional patches of real farmland, spawning small and bitter things in spite of the poor soil, and the fae, and the High Command’s magical experiments.

And the very real threat of a neighbor poisoning one’s food as it grew.

She could have fit ten such farms inside the first Demacian one she saw, and she wouldn't have grown nearly as much. All of it out in the open, as if there weren’t any danger to that.

Kat scuffed up a patch of grass by the side of the path. The earth underneath was nearly black, no streaks of rock, no patches of poisoned earth.

She had to fight back a surge of something bitter. Her people fought and struggled to grow anything at all without disaster, or sabotage, or just a lack of resources killing it, when just across the border, Demacia could simply put things in the ground and look after them?

No one had ever made the mistake of telling her that life was fair, but this felt like a divine insult.

The farther that they travelled, the more at ease Jarvan seemed to become, sticking close to her side not out of anxiety, but to point out unfamiliar flora or massive pens for farmed animals - to share Demacia with her, it seemed. She wasn’t sure she wanted it to be shared, at first, but curiosity kicked in by and by, and she found herself irrationally pleased to see Jarvan’s disposition improving. It was better than how she’d found him, anyway; and while she obviously wasn’t in a position to say for certain that this was how he normally behaved, it certainly seemed to fit him better than the bitter ghost of a man she’d met.

The Vanguard ultimately stopped at a farming town several miles past the border to rest and resupply and alert the nearest courier of their imminent return. The rider’s face lit up with recognition when he located Jarvan in the mass of soldiers, and his gaze passed over her entirely as Garen gave him his orders.

Ultimately, the Vanguard rented out an entire inn centered in the town and packed into the pub that occupied its ground and basement levels. It immediately became much too loud and raucous for any unpleasant gawking to be done - something Jarvan seemed to appreciate at least as much as her - and the patrons sharing the space with Garen’s men weren’t nearly sober enough to show any dramatic appreciation to the military beyond offering them drinks.

All in all, it was comically at odds with the classic Demacian images of sternness and strict order. There was, perhaps, a bit less shoving than would be found in Noxus, and a notable absence of tavern brawls, but otherwise the scene wasn’t all that differentiable from something from her home.

As for Kat and Jarvan, no one made it close enough to bother them. The Vanguard had occupied every table by their sides, subtly discouraging an approach.

“What are you going to tell them if anyone asks what I'm supposed to be?” she asked Jarvan, staring at her plate of food.

It looked good. She wasn’t happy about it.

Jarvan, having immediately dug into his meal, paused with his mouth full and a quizzical expression on his face. It was much more endearing than it should have been.

“I’ll tell them that you rescued me, of course,” he said, only after having chewed and swallowed. “And once I have, I suppose they’ll assume you’re part of the D.S.B. - and a rather convincing member, at that. It’s your choice whether you’d like me to correct them. There’s no need for the general public to know, if you don’t want them to.”

Good. She could work with assumptions.

Kat nodded, finally spearing a tender chunk of meat on her own fork and twisting it into a manageable chunk.

“Not right now,” she said. “You can tell them once I'm out of the country.”

Maybe she was paranoid to be afraid of actual angry mobs coming after her, but it seemed like a perfectly reasonable expectation. Noxus and Demacia had never interacted on good terms since the former came into being. Every second Jarvan or the Vanguard spent not picking a fight with her felt like a reversal of some natural order.

“Fair enough,” Jarvan said. For a second, he looked as if he was ready to drop the subject. And then -

“They wouldn’t dislike you, you know,” he continued, much to her chagrin. “Well - if we presented it the right way, that is. I know that it was treason, but it was the right thing to do, Kat.”

Well, that was easy for him to say.

Katarina grimaced and took a larger bite to delay her response for a few extra seconds. “There's no such thing,” she said, watching Jarvan’s expression turn indignant in record time. “My family was under enough scrutiny before - ”

No . She wasn’t going to think about that.

They would survive. They always had.

“It doesn't matter how we feel about it,” she said instead. “It's done.”

“It matters to me ,” he replied after a moment, sounding as affronted as he looked. It could have been the beginning of something - an argument? Their first? - but he speared a piece of meat onto his fork instead and left his objection at that.

“I’m sorry,” he said, shoulders dipping with a badly-hidden sigh. “We don’t have to talk about it now.”

Katarina gave a one-sided shrug. “We can talk about whatever you want,” she said, “It doesn't bother me.” Which was definitely a lie, but one she'd been spouting since she was twelve years old, polished so smooth by repetition that she could almost believe it herself.

She investigated her cup of water before taking a small sip. It tasted like water. The cup smelled slightly of beer. She did not immediately drop dead.

“It can matter to you as much as you want, Jarvan,” she added.

Wait.

“...Your Highness,” she corrected quickly. I’m in Demacia now, she thought. That kind of thing probably matters .

She did not expect it to make Jarvan choke on his drink, but he coughed and sputtered and gawked at her for the correction so... maybe she was wrong about that.

“ Gods - you aren’t actually going to start calling me that now, are you?” Jarvan shook his head, the picture of dismay. “It’s bad enough with Garen. And at least he has an excuse.”

Katarina grinned, more than happy to pounce on both the change of subject and a fun new nerve.

“Just trying to prevent any angry mobs carrying me away for disrespecting the Crown,” she said, smirking. “Don't tell me it annoys you, your majestic high highness.”

Jarvan dropped his head into his hands.

“You can’t be serious,” he said, muffled, and looked up to glower at her half-heartedly.

Katarina was immovable, of course, until Jarvan cleared his throat, adopting a serious countenance and a stuffy, courtly tone.

“I would truly appreciate it if you’d forgo the formalities, Lady du Couteau.”

Ugh . Kat pulled a face into her forkful of potato.

“As long as you let everyone know you told me that,” she said, relenting. “I'm serious about the angry mobs.”

Jarvan grinned at her sullen expression and triumphantly speared a piece of steak.

“How much do you want me to drop them?” Because she could - and would be happy to, if he was for some reason approving of it - call him amicably awful things to his face.

“I want you to drop them a reasonable, friendly amount,” he concluded. “I promise no one will chase you with a pitchfork.”

“I'll remember that if I ever need to call you an idiot,” Katarina said, satisfied. “And I hope your people are smart enough to know that there are better household weapons than pitchforks, anyway.”

“What, are even vicious mobs different in Noxus?” Jarvan snickered, “I’ll have you know, here in Demacia, they wield torches and pitchforks. Like dignified farmfolk.”

“In Noxus, it's something more sensible,” she said with a chuckle. “They actually have to defend their homes from time to time, you know. It isn't just foxes you have to worry about where I'm from.”

Most tools where she was from were built with the secondary purpose of absolutely destroying anything that tried to mess with their owner - man, beast, or neither. But that was another story, and she doubted that he wanted to know anything more of Noxus than he’d already been forced to experience.

“The torches are the same, though,” she added. “More useful against some things.”

“Yes, well, you'll have to forgive us for losing the art of regular home invasion.” Jarvan rolled his eyes. “Is it really that dangerous in Noxus? Well - not for your family, I suppose, but the common folk? I’d always wondered if we weren’t exaggerating the problem.”

Kat snorted. “My family didn't escape it either. Why do you think there are so few of us left?”

She considered how best to describe what Noxus was like to someone she knew wouldn’t be inclined to appreciate its good parts. There probably wasn’t any way to.

“It's not just people,” she explained finally. “Not when you're outside of the gutter or the nobility. It's mostly everything else .” She nodded towards Garen. “Your rescue party brought enough wards and talismans to invade the Shadow Isles. And that's just for the things in the wild.”

“And that sort of thing still affects you in the capital?” Jarvan paused for a moment, apparently turning this new information over in his mind. “The magic, I mean - I would have guessed you would have all found some way to dampen it by now, or something. ” He hummed thoughtfully and tore into a chunk of bread, directing his gaze quickly back to Katarina in polite attentiveness.

“Oh, those don't invade civilization,” she agreed. There was a little bit of bitterness in her tone but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. Most of the mages she'd met could rot in whatever dimension they kept pulling nightmares out of, as far as she was concerned. “But we have our own breed of mad scientists. Darkwill loves his pet mages.”

Or perhaps he was the pet. It was hard to tell, sometimes. She wasn’t supposed to question the seat of the Grand General, but her father taught her better than to think that the person holding it was automatically infallible. Everyone had a weakness.

(Katarina’s were more disastrous than most, it seemed.)

“And your share of actual mad scientists, from what I’ve heard,” Jarvan replied, eyebrow raising. “Although, I have to ask -” He tried, with very little success, to force back a grin. “Was that a little resentment towards your revered Grand General?” He sounded worryingly delighted by the prospect. Teasingly, he continued, “We don’t particularly like his Immortal Darkness either, but why don’t you?”

Katarina paused mid-chew, suddenly panicked that she'd been caught in something. A moment into her flash of terror, Jarvan chuckled, and then it fully sank in that he knows I don't trust the Grand General was a few steps below I actually committed treason for him anyway and it didn't matter what she’d been caught in..

“I think he's insane,” she said. “You know what he's doing in Ionia.” Probably.

Jarvan sobered somewhat. “You may be giving him too much credit,” he said. “But I don't know. He’s been around at least three hundred years, hasn't he? Maybe we aren't meant to live that long.”

If she was being honest, Kat had wondered that herself. History in general - and the fact that Noxus still existed in particular - definitely suggested that Darkwill had been… present at first. More than competent, or he wouldn’t have been Grand General in the first place. Staying there…

Katarina shrugged. “Doesn’t matter why he’s doing it,” she said. “Only that he is. We don’t kill our own for doing what they were told.” Especially not in a way that ensured they couldn’t fight back, didn’t even have a chance to try. How could you prove you were worth living when your opponent was wildfire or poison gas or magical backsplash?

But as safe as Jarvan has been so far, she wasn’t comfortable enough to go on that kind of tangent yet. She picked at her food instead.

As she spoke, a smile spread across Jarvan’s face, but she didn’t look up in time to see it before he hid it in a quick bite of his bread.

“Well, no man rules forever,” he said after chewing and swallowing. “Someone stronger will come around, sooner or later. Sooner, I hope.”

“Not soon enough,” Katarina opined (because if it were soon enough then perhaps by some miracle she would have still gone to Ionia and let Jarvan get himself rescued without the benefit of her defection). She flashed him a small smile of something like appreciation, though, at least for the sentiment.

It wasn’t his fault, after all.

“So,” Katarina said conversationally, once it became clear that he wasn’t going to continue the previous train. “Anyone being posted at my door this time?”

Jarvan raised his eyebrows and glanced sidelong at the nearest members of the Vanguard. They had seemingly been chattering amongst themselves in Demacian all along, but several of them noticed Jarvan’s stare before he even said anything.

He glanced back towards Katarina, shooting her a look like, ‘ how much do you want to bet ,’ before promptly questioning the absurdly broad-shouldered man to his left.

“So, Reginald.” Jarvan smiled broadly. “Is our fearless leader still convinced that Lady du Couteau might slip us in the night?”

Reginald looked at Katarina, noticeably within earshot. Then he looked at his Prince, apparently weighing his options.

“I think it would be a terrible idea for her to try, Your Highness,” he said, with a diplomatic sort of laugh. “But I don't think he wants to lock her up to make sure of it.”

Katarina rolled her eyes. “I feel better already,” she said.

Jarvan snorted.

“Then there shouldn’t be any reason to keep her under guard, should there?” Jarvan pressed, grinning unfailingly. “Besides, the least he could do is let all of us finally have a full night’s rest. I’d say setting up a watch would just be cruel.”

Katarina gave Jarvan a curious look, but said nothing about his sudden urge to… what? Defend her (illusory, as much as she hated to agree with a Demacian who wasn't the Prince) freedom? There was no reasonable explanation for that. He didn’t gain anything but potential danger from the literal assassin under his roof.

Maybe he was trying to make her more likely to feel loyal to him, but it seemed a strange way to go about it.

Reginald, meanwhile, just looked relieved the questioning took a turn with which he didn’t have to concern himself.

“I'm afraid I don't know what the plans are for tonight, Your Highness,” he said. “But I could bring the Captain over if you want a word with him yourself.”

“I really would appreciate that.” Jarvan didn’t press Reginald any further, only grinning as he sent him off before promptly pivoting back towards Katarina. “You know what, if I were to tell Garen that his men need sleep, he may just volunteer himself.” He wrinkled his nose. “And I’m not sure that would be any better.”

Katarina grimaced. “It would be worse,” she agreed. “The others didn't try to talk .”

Garen marched over with the same posture as if they were in a throne room and not an inn in the middle of nowhere. “You wanted to see me?”

Kat ate another carrot. This was going to get interesting, she felt.

Jarvan, meanwhile, looked blithely up at Garen, refusing to acknowledge his needlessly proper posture and beckoning him to join them at the table.

“I hope I didn’t drag you away from anything,” he said.

“Not at all,” Garen replied, sitting down.

Katarina scooted a little farther away as inconspicuously as possible.

“But we were wondering about Kat’s sleeping arrangements tonight. More specifically, if anyone will be watching her - it seems unnecessary to maintain a guard at this point, don’t you think?”

Jarvan looked remarkably hopeful. Especially for someone who should have been used to having his hopes crushed.

“There isn't enough room for her to be on her own,” Garen said. “What are you suggesting, Your Highness?”

Jarvan did not think this through. It became obvious that he did not think this through when he replied, without any apparent reservation, “Well, I would hate to make any of your men uncomfortable - wouldn’t it be best if she stayed with me?”

This was apparently a completely reasonable and unobjectionable solution, in Jarvan’s mind. From the side, Katarina choked on her food.

“After all, I’m apparently the only one here who doesn’t still expect Kat to betray us, for whatever reason,” he added, completely flippant. “I doubt anyone else would get any sleep at all sharing a room with her.”

Garen’s breath hitched and he (barely) managed to conceal it with a small, solemn burst of coughing into the crook of his arm. Even Katarina, having only just recovered from her initial startlement, swung her head sharply to look at Jarvan, her eyebrows rising.

“Alone?” Garen said, momentarily too caught off guard to phrase it in a more delicate way.

Kat caught the implication and flushed. “I doubt it,” she said into the rim of her cup, looking away.

Jarvan froze, realizing his mistake.

And then, with all the restraint and self-preservation he’d demonstrated in the past few weeks, he opened his mouth.

“Well I don’t know, Garen, maybe Reggie should join us,” Jarvan said sarcastically, with a sarcastic expression. “He’s sort of cute.”

Katarina looked at Garen, trying to figure out whether she could get away with laughing. Garen looked exhausted . She snorted and went back to her food.

“I am not asking you to reduce the already unnecessary surveillance while we’re well within Demacian borders and, for that matter, have proper shelter for the night, so that we can jump each other, Garen.” Jarvan sounded almost venomous, as if Garen were personally at fault for having drawn that - not unreasonable - conclusion. (Katarina considered the doubtful logistics of Jarvan jumping anyone at all in his current state.) “I only hoped that the entire Vanguard could have a full night’s rest, now that we’re finally positioned to do so. It’s still a long way to the capital; there’s no point tiring your men out over these ridiculous assumptions and mistrusts.”

“It has little to do with mistrust, Your Highness,” Garen said carefully. His voice was actually fairly quiet; Kat was almost impressed. “Regardless of your reasons for suggesting this or my own impression of her, I would rather not explain to the King that I allowed a known assassin to sleep in your room before he was certain there was nothing to fear.”

“I would be more than happy to explain the circumstances to my father myself,” Jarvan replied, nose wrinkling. “That is, if there were even any reason to disclose specific sleeping arrangements to him.

“If she wanted to kill me, don’t you think she would have done so by now? She’s had every opportunity, and has shown nothing but goodwill. And besides, as you mentioned, we’re limited on space. It isn’t as if the two of us would be alone, is it?”

“She certainly could have,” Garen agreed, exhausted. “But I do think the King would take an interest in how she was handled.”

Kat made a face into her cup. “Am I a horse now?” she asked flatly.

She wasn’t sure what Garen might look like if he ever lost his temper, but they must have been at least halfway there.

“No,” Garen said, cutting off short. He glanced up at the Prince again. “The Noxians did not addle your brains, according to the doctors,” he said reluctantly. “If it's your order, you have the right.”

Jarvan wilted a bit. “I’d prefer not to have to give you orders at all,” he said - an insistence that almost made Kat snort audibly in disbelief. She may not have been present for much of his captivity, but if how he was perfectly comfortable ordering her around was any indication… she could all too easily imagine him trying, without even moderate success, to give orders to every Noxian soldier who appeared in his room.

(It really wasn’t a mystery to anyone why he came back in such rough shape.)

After a moment, he seemed to collect himself. He took a steadying breath and glanced warily at Katarina, seeming to weigh something silently before rising off the bench. “Kat, would you hold it forever against me if we left you alone for a moment?”

He looked almost doubtful. She would take offense to that if he weren’t absolutely correct in doing so.

Katarina’s expression was, for once, successfully neutral when she spoke. “Not forever,” she said. “I have better things to haunt people over when I’m dead.” Lots of them.

Chapter Text

Garen led them to an emptier section of the inn, but emptier did not approach the level of privacy Jarvan was looking for. He didn’t try to explain that with words, instead bringing Garen directly out of the busy tavern and a few long strides from the door. The street was empty, the moon hung high in the sky, and somehow the air felt lighter than it ever did on Noxian land. He was probably imagining things, Jarvan thought. There couldn’t possibly be that big a difference in the air.

He set his sights on Garen, remembering that he’d meant to speak, and shifted his weight nervously while trying to determine how to even begin such a conversation. He wished, certainly not for the first time since the whole ordeal had begun, that he’d listened better to his father.

“I don’t want you to think that I’m forsaking you for her,” Jarvan started, and stopped immediately to reflect on how ridiculous he sounded. 

This was not at all how he intended to start. He didn’t know how it got away from him so quickly. He wasn’t sure how a simple conversation felt more embarrassing than the verifiable nightmare that preceded it.

“Damnit, that’s not what I - I don’t know how to explain this, Garen.”

Garen waited patiently for several seconds, hands folded behind his back, before even attempting to respond. “It doesn't seem like something that can be explained.” And then Garen, gods bless him, practically managed to collect Jarvan’s thoughts for him. “I'm not sure what you mean, but I… I don't believe her a threat to me. But I do want to take precautions, no matter what she's done on the way here.”

Jarvan didn’t respond immediately. He tried to choose the right words instead of coming out with whatever felt right in the spur of the moment.

Well, he tried.

“You make it sound as if it were all so... trivial. She didn’t pick me up on her way out of the Noxian army, you know. It wasn’t ever her intention to desert.” He hadn’t made any headway defending Katarina on her merits thus far, and was sure he wouldn’t make much more by beating the point to death. But they weren’t surrounded by the Vanguard for the moment, and Jarvan had finally found a modicum of courage, so he blurted out the important part in a rush.

“And that isn’t even all, Garen, I - I don’t think you’ve realized this yet, but did you ever stop to think about what she actually prevented? You may not have thought of it this way, but Demacia decided to send my oldest friend on what could very well have been the most dangerous assignment of the decade. And my father, he may have been sure that you would have succeeded, or - or maybe he didn’t have any other choice, but you might have died there if not for her intervention and I don’t know how I would have lived with myself, if I’d lived!”

He stopped only when he felt that he’d run out of words, breath heavy, having worked himself into the first show of visible distress since his rescue. His heart pounded, adrenaline taking over too quickly for him to immediately register his shame.

But there was shame. If there weren’t, he wouldn’t have had to bring Garen all the way outside to confront it.

Garen was quiet, for what felt like a troublingly long time. But Jarvan only had his heartbeats to measure by, and they were certainly coming too quickly to be trusted.

“I understand,” Garen said quietly. “For what it's worth, I agree with you, but these aren't my decisions to make. They're yours or your father's.” 

Jarvan wasn’t sure what he expected. He wasn’t oblivious; he’d been well aware of Garen’s new attitude since they’d reunited - but he’d hoped, perhaps foolishly, that it was at least partly a front. He had hoped that appearances had come into play, and that Garen hadn’t forgotten that they’d practically grown up together.

He felt sick. Ignoring the pit in his stomach, he leaned back a bit, steeling himself and wishing that this weren’t making him sweat just as easily as Jericho Swain had.

“I wouldn’t have made the same decision,” Jarvan said, not entirely sure if the words were audible over blood rushing in his ears. And then, because he had never known when to shut up, when to cut his losses and stop provoking more of the same, he continued.

“I still care about you, Garen.” 

It was the wrong thing to say, Jarvan thought. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t sound so much like defeat.

Garen, it seemed, hadn’t the faintest idea how to rescue him from this line of thinking. Part of Jarvan - the sensible part, having been all but usurped by impulse and indignity - was not surprised. Garen had never been much of a wordsmith, after all.

“And I you,” Garen said cautiously. “But, your - Jarvan - ” The instinct towards a title did not go unnoticed. Impossible, Jarvan thought - how could Garen be more used to saying it than he was hearing it? “I don't know to… You're a prince now,” Garen said. “You were before, but you…”

It was Jarvan’s turn to rescue him, then. 

“But I wasn’t first in line, I know. I realize,” he said, completing Garen’s thought. “But what am I supposed to do, Garen? In case you hadn’t noticed, there isn’t a single other prince on the continent right now. I can’t very well be prohibited from having friends.”

It did sound ludicrous, when he put it that way. 

“I’m sure you meant it in good faith,” Jarvan continued, soldiering on, “But I don’t want you to revere me or take orders. I’ve never asked that of you, and I never will. Hell - I could become King tomorrow, and still I’d prefer to treat you as a peer than as a subject.”

Later, perhaps, when he had time to reflect on all of this, Jarvan would realize how many times he’d used the word ‘I’, and how much he’d focused on what he wanted. But that had always been his nature. Jarvan wouldn’t preempt his mistakes; he’d find them several hours later and wish he’d thought a little harder at the time. He was never at his best when he was impulsive, and the trouble was that he was usually impulsive.

“I just - I just want to be able to talk to you again.”

Garen came perilously close to actually fidgeting. Jarvan didn’t miss the signs.

“You can still talk to me,” Garen said, almost plaintively. He sighed, as if understanding something foreign, something no doubt beyond Jarvan and not worth drawing his attention to. “I'll keep it in mind,” he added, finally.

Inexplicably, Jarvan found himself resenting what might have been an imagined slight.

“Try to,” Jarvan replied, finding himself just as agitated as he was when they first came out here. Perhaps more. And then, at the risk of pushing his luck - because, really, if there were anything he didn’t learn in captivity, it was how not to push his luck - Jarvan continued. “What happened to you, Garen?”

Garen paused again, heavy and potent, but this time Jarvan caught something in his look not unlike pity.

(Because - yes, he knew, in the back of his mind, that nothing had happened to Garen. Garen’s world and life weren’t overturned. Garen wasn’t thrust into a seat of power before he’d been out of mourning. Garen hadn’t suffered under Noxian attention for uncounted weeks.)

“I don't understand,” Garen said at last.

Jarvan’s approach, thus far, had been to pretend that things had not happened to him. Or at least to refuse to acknowledge them. He didn’t plan to stop until forced to and, as the Noxians had learned, it was excruciatingly difficult to force him to do anything.

“You’ve never acted this way before,” Jarvan said, tone almost accusatory in those first few words before he dialed it back. “I thought - I was under the impression that we were friends, and I don’t see why any crown should change that. And I don’t understand what could have changed while you were gone.”

Jarvan was overcome by a sneaking, paranoid suspicion that this was what the military did to him. Perhaps it instilled too much loyalty somehow, or respect even for an authority trying to decline it.

He wouldn’t voice such a thing out loud, of course. It sounded ludicrous even in his head.

“You've never been - ” captured before died on Garen’s tongue, but Jarvan heard it. And couldn’t unhear it - couldn’t understand why Garen would pick them apart bloody in a bizarre game of titles and formalities when there was so much pain behind those words. “I am your friend,” Garen said. “But I have been charged to take you to the King, and until that is done, I am your captain.” 

Jarvan meant to try again. He wanted to, but even without giving any thought he knew that continuing to talk would be like beating a dead horse - or trying to revive one, maybe. It certainly felt like trying to raise the dead, between them.

“Fine.” Jarvan spit the word as if it he mistook it for an arrow he could sling. “Then, until then, I am your Prince.”

The words felt hollow, even as he tried to poise them as a threat. He wouldn’t realize it on his own, but this wasn’t a completely unfamiliar reaction. It was simply what he did - a reflex, not so newly discovered. Jarvan wouldn’t recoil from a blow; he’d lash out.

Garen deserved it much less than any of his recent targets.

“And as such, I would appreciate if you and your men did not treat my friend with unwarranted hostility.”

It was a step too far, he knew. But he didn’t know how to stop - his back was to a wall. Wasn’t it? He hadn’t realized that he could retreat. 

“She doesn’t need to be watched over at night, she’s been nothing but good to us.”

Chapter Text

“I just—I just want to be able to talk to you again.”

In the shadows, cloaked by the skills her brother taught her, Katarina held her breath. She shouldn't be listening to this, she knew; she should go back, because any minute her excuse of looking for a toilet would absolutely run out, and she hadn't earned enough trust with the other Demacians that she wanted to start looking suspicious now. Not this far past the border, especially.

She just—she didn’t feel safe when Jarvan wasn’t there to take everyone else's eyes off her. Maybe her pride would have kept her indoors despite his absence, but as the minutes slipped by with no indication that he was going to come back…

She was curious. That was a good enough reason to convince herself with, at least at first.

“You can still talk to me.” Garen’s voice, but she hadn’t heard it sound so quiet before. It just twisted the knowledge in her that this was private—and it wasn’t as though she hadn’t done spywork before, snuck into places and listened to things that weren’t hers to know, but that had been different. Garen sighed; she timed her breath with the sound, just in case, and still she didn’t move. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Try to.” At least Jarvan’s clipped, annoyed tone was more familiar, even if she had originally heard it directed to her. Another pause, just long enough for Katarina to think that the conversation was over; and then: “What happened to you, Garen?”

The silence was a living thing, heavy and thick in the air. “I don’t understand,” Garen answered. She couldn’t see his face, but his back was straight, his posture parade-perfect; he could have been genuinely unaffected, or it could have just been his own way of pretending that he was.

Jarvan, meanwhile, was wound up tighter than she’d seen him since they crossed the border. “You’ve never acted this way before,” he almost snapped. “I thought—I was under the impression that we were friends—”

Katarina bit her tongue. There was something weighty collecting behind her ribs. This wasn’t the behavior of a man who had remained unbroken after his ordeal.

He still survived, of course. That was the important thing. But this part…

(She wanted so badly to hope for something.)

“—and I don’t understand what could have changed while you were gone.”

“You’ve never been—” Garen cut himself off before he finished the thought, but they all knew what it was. “I am your friend,” he amended, and the words were clear and his voice was even but there was pain behind it, somewhere. “But I have been charged to take you to the King, and until that is done, I am your captain.”

It wouldn’t help. Kat wasn’t sure that much of anything would, but even then she wasn’t expecting the vitriol in Jarvan’s “Fine,” had to stop herself from flinching even when she wasn’t the one receiving it. “Then, until then, I am your Prince.”

Garen may have known Jarvan for however many years, but Katarina knew him in that prison. His boneheaded need to fight back even when he knew he would lose was one of the reasons she’d helped him escape, yes, but now that he was well and truly free and he was still falling back on that pattern—

“—she’s been nothing but good to us.”

And there was the tiniest flash of guilt, as misplaced as she knew it to be. Katarina wanted to walk away, to slink back into the inn and pretend that nothing was happening, but there was no threat to her life here; retreat would be cowardice. And she knew Garen’s kind because he was the same as any Noxian soldier in it for Noxian glory and not desperation or fury: he wouldn’t bend from his duties. Jarvan might snap out of his current state on his own, but he might not, now that there was a target for his pent-up… everything that wouldn’t hurt him back.

She couldn’t watch that cycle go on. It wasn’t for Garen’s sake that she interrupted. It wasn’t even really for Jarvan.

She slipped back into easy visibility and stepped out of the shadows. “People looking for you,” she said.

Jarvan physically relaxed all at once at her interruption—too quickly, like he wanted to pretend that he hadn’t been tense in the first place. He was still on edge, though, his posture a little too straight, his eyes guarded and lost as his gaze drifted back to Garen. “Oh,” he said. “We’ve been out too long—we should be getting back.”

He didn’t wait for a reply before turning away from Garen and making his way back towards the tavern door. Katarina expected him to brush past them both, but he paused as he reached her; there was an awkward shuffle as she initially tried to simply get out of the way, but after a moment she fell into step at his side.

She could feel Garen’s eyes on them both as Jarvan reached the door.

Kat didn’t try to speak until after all three of them were inside, Garen closing the door and immediately heading towards the knot of the Vanguard. She wasn’t sure what she was meant to say. But it couldn’t be nothing, right?

“I’m a light sleeper,” she understated. “You might have a better night on your own.” She definitely would.

Jarvan inhaled, then didn’t do anything with it, as though originally intending to speak and then thinking better of it immediately. “Do you really think I’ve been sleeping well as it is?” he asked instead—which was a fair point, she knew he had to have been miserable every night, but all she could possibly do was add to that. “Besides,” he added, more quietly, “I can’t—the last thing I want is to speak to Garen again tonight.” He did his best to sound affronted, but it wasn’t all that convincing.

She knew the feeling.

He sat back down at the bench, slowly seeming to deflate. He looked listlessly up at Kat as she slid in beside him, swallowing hard before he spoke.

“Do you have any siblings?”

Katarina tried not to flinch and failed. She tried not to feel like Jarvan was just twisting the knife and succeeded, if only narrowly. It wasn’t exactly a more comfortable conversation than the alternative, but at least she knew what to do with it.

“Two,” she said. “Brother and sister. Talon and Cassiopeia.” And they must have been so disappointed in her. Or angry. Or—

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have reminded you of that,” Jarvan said, quickly and quietly, so that the end of his sentence was cropped short by the beginning of her next one.

“You? I hear royalty likes having backups.” She almost winced as soon as she finished saying it—she’d just reached for the first thing to deflect with, without even waiting for a response, and in retrospect it didn’t sound like the best thing to toss out. Gods, there was no way for her to know for sure if it was even accurate; there was rarely such a thing as an only child in Noxus when the parents gave a damn, but Demacia was a different creature entirely. Perhaps some people felt that it was safe enough to pin their whole legacy on a single person. Perhaps that was normal, even for their peculiar, bloodline-based monarchs.

“No, it was only me,” Jarvan replied, wringing his hands beneath the table. “...Garen may have passed for one.” He gave a short sigh. “We’ve never argued quite like this before.”

Kat watched Jarvan stare at the table. So that was what this was about. It seemed silly for a moment—but that was coming from her; her whole life had been her family, particularly her siblings. “If you are family, it’ll work out,” she said with a calmness and a certainty she felt about nothing else in life. “Someone apologizes and everyone forgets the rest.”

“You sound very confident.” He looked at Katarina warily, as though trying to divine some further meaning from her posture or expression, but didn’t appear to come up with any particular revelation. “I’m not exactly… I’m not the best with apologies,” Jarvan continued, remorse already heavy in his voice. “And if Garen offers one I might have to strangle him.”

“Neither am I,” Kat offered with amused honesty. “Cassie didn’t much care how I said it, though. As long as I meant it.” She drummed her fingers on her thigh. “You’re smarter than you look. You can figure it out.”

She paused.

“He’ll probably apologize, though.”

“I know, ” Jarvan groaned, heaving a labored sigh. “And if I try to beat him to it, he may not believe me, and if I don’t, he’ll assume I’m only following his lead.”

Jarvan seemed to be assuming a whole lot of the worst without any basis. But Kat didn’t know enough about Garen to offer any particular comment on the matter.

“I didn’t even mean to start an argument,” the Prince continued woefully. “Why did I say those things to him?” 

Katarina barely knew why she said half the things she ever did. “I don't know,” she said. “But nobody acts right after they go through what you did.” Not reassuring. “...at first,” she amended. What, was she supposed to lie to him?

(She was absolutely supposed to lie to him, judging by the look Jarvan gave her.)

“How long will that excuse last, do you think?” Jarvan asked, in a way that almost made it seem like he wasn’t looking for a number of days. “It doesn’t matter—maybe I just need time to clear my head.”

Katarina gave the ceiling a noncommittal shrug. “You're probably right,” she said. “I don't know how much time, anyway. I'm no doctor.” And she hardly knew him. He was made of stubborn stuff; she was very aware of that much. She couldn't think of any reason why he wouldn't come back from this—which was more than she could say for a lot of people.

How quickly Jarvan would come back from this was another thing entirely.

“Where am I sleeping, anyway?” she asked, just in case the reminder would make him come to his senses.

The subject change seemed to successfully grind Jarvan’s sulking to a halt. He frowned, looking critically at Katarina and pausing for an uncomfortably long time.

“Just share a room with me,” he said at last, apparently not having come to his senses at all. “I can’t imagine Garen will want to, after that display.” And then, quickly enough to be conspicuous: “You don’t snore, do you?”

“I think you'd be surprised at what Garen will want, if he really is family,” Katarina said before his final question processed. She had to stop for a moment just to think about it.

Technically, she was still an enemy assassin, regardless of what she'd done of late. How could snoring possibly be his biggest concern?

“No,” she said cautiously. “But I wake up. Suddenly.” Silently, but suddenly. She couldn't imagine that would be good for his emotional state.

“I can’t see how that would be a problem.” Jarvan shifted on the bench. “As long as I shouldn’t expect to find you staring at me in the middle of the night, anyway,” he joked.

Katarina shrugged uncomfortably, too off-balance for humor. “Only until I remember who you are,” she said.

That… didn't sound like a helpful thing to say at all. (But then, her usefulness stopped a long time ago, here. Given Garen’s sudden appearance, it could perhaps be argued that she was never really useful in the first place; just slightly faster.)

This might have been the worst idea she'd gone through with in her entire life. It definitely made some sort of list.

Jarvan raised his eyebrows, but didn’t make an issue of it. “Fair enough,” he said. “Frankly, you could have the most unpleasant sleeping habits imaginable and I wouldn't mind for the presence of an actual bed. ”

Katarina mused that it was the most sensible thing he’d said for half the evening.