"What did you do?" Katarina inquired, glaring at Garen with a disappointing amount of intensity.
"Oh, nothing, just played around with you a bit," Garen mocked, turning his back to the Noxian and picking up an egg from a bag - starting his breakfast. He heard a growl come from behind him.
"Playing?" Katarina asked, offended. "How dare you even-"
"It was just a joke, Katarina." Garen quickly addressed her, using her name.
The feeling of her name being said made Katarina feel stunted. There was no "Miss", "Madame", "Mistress", "Commander"... just Katarina. Katarina.
The assassin's face took on a tint of a rose as she turned her back to Garen, trying to wipe the color off as if it was removable.
"I'm going to get breakfast." She said, beginning her leave from the opening. Garen's voice trapped her, "We got enough yesterday. Sit with me and I'll prepare it for you."
Before the assassin knew it, she was sitting across from Garen, the fire pit between them, each holding a stick with meat at it's end into the flames.
Katarina couldn't look at him. The thought of the last night ran through her head, especially what she had shamefully admitted to herself... Katarina loved Garen, though she didn't know exactly why... and it took some bravery for her to admit to such a lazy and weak thing as love. The word even sounded wrong when put with the name "Katarina". "Love." It didn't fit.
On the opposite side of the flames, Garen's gaze was unrelenting. Garen stared holes into her while she dodged the throwing knives. She looked up at him eventually as she bit into a tough bit of skin and chewed, eyeing him back. Wondering what was going on in that mind.
She finished the bite, "This your daily routine?" She asked, thinking about the last day and how it was technically the same as how the morning was progressing in the present.
Garen took a while to respond, taking many full-mouthed bites of his own stick of meat as if it took some pondering.
"Yeah, I guess. I don't typically wake up to someone as beautiful as yourself, though."
Katarina's face was a beet. An apple. A rose. She stood up instantly, dropping the stick on the ground and struggling to catch her breath past the ache his words made in her lungs and stomach. She drowned in those words, feeling herself become enveloped with the thought of him seeing her as beautiful.
Though Katarina knew it was the typical opinion of her - a beautiful, deadly, sexy, cunning assassin - Katarina couldn't imagine what he could really be thinking. Was he mocking her reputation or speaking his mind?
Katarina picked up her things, grabbing her clothes and weapons and quickly put everything in a Demacian utility bag that sat nearby.
"Katarina? No - don't take that. Katarina. What are you doing? Is this a joke? Just going out for a hunt right? Did I say something wrong? I really don't see anyone around here. No one even visits to check on me. I've been here for just a few days, too. Katarina? Are you even listening? Come on, not this again. You don't need to run away again."
It was the most he'd ever said in a sentence, yet she couldn't hear a thing Garen was saying over the beating that filled her eardrums.
Katarina turned her back to the warrior, putting the backpack over her shoulders and readying her stance. She'd leave, this time for good.
Katarina jumped through the trees, over animal, trail, river, and rock. She kept going, faster and faster - her mind quickly forgetting about him as it replaced memory of him with memory of landscape, a mental map. Wind through her hair, the sound of animals skittering away at a light tap of her foot against branch after branch. She was relieved, her mind cleared of him - cleared of everything and the worry of her first love.
