from swain : you worked hard. you did everything right.
three decades. three decades, she's waited to hear those words. not from swain, really, though it coming from him doesn't lessen the immense weight of its worth crushing into her chest, putting a strain upon her ribs so tight they squeeze against her lungs. katarina is stunned into silence, falling so still that she isn't sure if her own heart is beating.
it was not easy, growing up as marcus du couteau's firstborn. from the moment she took her first steps, he began to make her into his vision, to prime her as the heir to his legacy and that of their house with a knife thrust into her small, delicate hands. katarina had no friends, no life or childhood beyond the training grounds of their manor. where other noxian children played in the streets and ran happily beneath the sun, katarina trained from sunup to sundown until her limbs were sore and her bones ached. were she anyone else's daughter, perhaps the blooming bruises on her skin or the scars on her knuckles might have been cause for concern ( though let's be honest, this is noxus; an ailing child, a child in distress, is something everyone turned a blind eye to as they dressed the little ones in flimsy armor much too large for arms and legs that would never live to grow into. for the glory of noxus, the glory of the empire. ), but she was the du couteau heir. of course, it meant there was naught to be seen.
katarina spent so many long, grueling, exhausting years trying aimlessly, and failing spectacularly, to live up to her father's impossible expectations. no matter her perfection, no matter her obedience, no matter her undeniable results of success, it was never enough, and look what she โ what noxus โ had to show for it.
katarina stands silently over her father's grave, curling her gloved hands into tightly bound fists. he should have listened to her, but his pride never would have allowed him to admit his faults or his wrongs. too transfixed in an embittered era of noxian history and a legacy of shame that the cult-like few still thought of as true noxian strength, marcus never would have tolerated an empire underneath jericho swain, either.
" at least someone finally seems to think so, " she murmurs, kicking a pebble away from the headstone, sending it clattering down the path. katarina doesn't know how to thank the grand general, or if she should at all. for a woman who's never known acknowledgement toward her accomplishments, or praise, it feels unnaturally foreign and crawls against her skin, even when she knows it's right, that it's something she deserves. but katarina can't help herself, so she turns on her heels, looks up at the towering man behind her and says, " but would he be dead if i had? "
even now katarina couldn't say if she has any love for her father. growing up, she thought she did, but maybe she hadn't at all. she can't discern familial love from obligation because he is โ was โ her blood, like her love and loyalty was something he was owed just for being her father. she doesn't know if things, if she, would be better off if he'd lived. no one can say, now, though.
