Chapter Text
Riven sat beneath the tree to which she was chained, to which Teneff had insisted she be chained, with her manacled wrists resting on her bent knees. Across the cooking fire from her, Teneff regarded her seriously while exhaling slow puffs of smoke from her pipe. Riven barely looked at her. Instead, Teneff’s immobile form blurred into her peripheral vision while Riven merely kept track of her. In case she moved.
‘Are you angry with me?’, Teneff asked without moving. Riven’s eyes shifted to focus on her captor.
‘I am angry’, she said, and Teneff pulled harder on her pipe, creating a warm orange glow in the chamber. ‘I am not angry with you’, Riven concluded and, finally, Teneff moved. She pulled the pipe from her lips and tilted her head to look at her captive with a furrowed brow.
‘I don’t understand’, she said simply. Her posture slackened as her shoulders fell and she took a breath.
‘I grieve for my fair’ , Riven clarified. She took great care pronouncing the final word. ‘He has lost, now, the whole of his family.’ Her gaze locked onto Teneff’s then, and her fury must have been visible; the other woman could not maintain eye contact.
Teneff chewed on her potential replies. Each of them withered under Riven’s stare and died in her mouth. She licked her dry lips and took another long drag from her pipe to fill the silence between them. When nothing seemed to be coming to her Riven spoke again.
‘He has lost his children to the war, his wife to age, and I to my past’
‘Noxus is not your past’, Teneff snapped. Her composure melted and she stood, arms folded with no thought for her pipe. It seemed to Riven that it was not just Noxus that Teneff was defending. After all, there she was, gathered to her feet and decidedly not lost to the past. She thrust a finger at Riven. ‘You are Noxian.’
‘I am responsible.’
‘And who is responsible for Marit? Don’t you grieve for her?’, and then Riven was on her feet too, the chain that bound her to the tree vibrated from the sudden tension along its length. Teneff looked shocked, though whether it was at Riven’s sudden aggression or her own words was unclear. Riven thought she could see a twinge of regret in her eye, just for a moment. Teneff did not step away, but widened her stance and loosened her arms in case she had to use them. She still could not hold Riven’s burning gaze.
‘I am responsible’, Riven repeated while staring through her. As she spoke the words a shiver ran through her shoulders and down her spine, tightening the muscles in her throat.
‘Sister, forgive me.’ On the ground below her, Marit was bleeding out. It would only take moments for her strength to leave her entirely; she used the last of it to grasp at Riven’s collar, pulling her down to look her sister in the eye as she hissed out her final word.
‘No.’
Riven closed her eyes to the images, breaking her stare for the first time. She didn’t much care if Teneff took the opportunity to strike her. When no blow came, Riven leaned back against her tree and slid back to the dirt. ‘Of course, I grieve for her.’
‘Forgive me, sister’, said Teneff, and Riven could hear the sincerity in her voice struggling against her anger. When Riven opened her eyes Teneff walked to where Talz the basilisk was resting, she reached into his saddlebags and dug out the plain wooden discs that passed for dishes. She tossed one to Riven. ‘Marit is responsible for herself’, she said as she sat back down across the fire. ‘She died well.’ Riven felt the skin of her nose and brow scrunching together in irritation.
‘You place no blame on the hand that held the blade?’, disbelief coloured her voice. How could Teneff deny that Riven was to blame? Marit had made it very clear in her final moments how she felt.
‘Should you have let her kill you instead?’, Teneff asked and she stabbed one half of a cooked bird carcass out of the cooking pan and offered it to Riven. As she took it, Riven considered that perhaps things would be better if she had, but she knew that she didn’t have it in herself to die.
‘No’, she said, ‘but I didn’t need to kill her.’
‘She knew you would’, Teneff said. Her anger had faded. She placed her own half of the bird on her plate and dug into it with her knife, cutting off a small mouthful that she ate with her fingers. ‘I knew it, too. She shouldn’t have fought you.’ Riven felt an uncomfortable understanding creeping into her, something deeply Noxian, something she had denied. She picked at her meal with her fingers, it was tough and gamey. A wild bird suited to flight and travel, cooked hastily over an uneven fire.
‘Do you have another knife?’
‘Sister though you are, arming a captive is not something I’m willing to do’, Teneff said. Riven sighed.
‘I go willingly’, Riven reminded her. ‘If I wanted your life I would have taken it.’ It was not said as a threat, and Teneff smiled for the first time since they’d sat at the fire together.
‘Riven, you’re strong, but your hands are chained.’ Teneff cut another piece of meat for herself and grinned as she ate it, taunting Riven the way she might have when they were soldiers together. The way she might have before Riven shot up the ranks to become lieutenant, then commander, then captain. ‘I could beat you if I had to’, Teneff said. It was Riven’s turn to smile.
‘If you believe that, then why did you insist on tethering me to this tree?’
‘Hmph’, Teneff grunted while chewing. ‘You see? I told you, you are Noxian.’ The moment passed between them, their smiles faded, and Riven’s thoughts lingered on Marit.
Marit’s glaive split like a twig. She was beaten, and they both knew it, but Marit wouldn’t accept it. She threw away the bottom half of her weapon and spat venomous words at Riven.
‘You’ll never escape what makes you broken, Riven. No matter where you go, it will always be with you.’ Her smile was cold and forced. She was afraid, spiteful, and weak. She lunged again. She was angry and desperate.
Riven drove her blade forward with a yell that felt like it would split her throat. Blood exploded from Marit’s chest and back as the sword passed through her. Riven’s heart was thundering in her ears. It sounded like war drums.
‘Is it Noxian to kill your sisters?’, she asked, and it took much of her strength to ask it without emotion.
‘It is Noxian to fight, and you fight like the spirit of Noxus herself’, as Teneff spoke her eyes were focused slightly upward, her expression was relaxed. She looked like she was remembering. A sigh slipped out of her, deep and slow, and she looked at Riven again, ‘maybe Marit forgot, maybe she was just so pissed she didn’t care, it doesn’t matter now. She charged you with intent to kill, she lost. She died well.’
Riven lifted her half of the cooked bird carcass to her mouth and ripped off a long strip of the meat with her teeth. Chewing gave her mouth something to do in the absence of words, and she had none. For the second time that night, the uncomfortable feeling of understanding settled within her. It was becoming increasingly unwelcome.
‘No hesitation, no fear of death, no pause for thought or feeling’, Teneff’s words stoked the fires of guilt in Riven’s stomach, and yet she sounded envious, maybe even awed. ‘Where do you go?’, she asked, ‘when you fight?’ Riven looked her in the eye and swallowed her mouthful of meat with a frown.
‘Actually’, she said, ‘I’m not sure where I go when I’m not.’
Teneff sat up straighter, placing one hand in the dirt to lean on. She looked like she might speak, so Riven cut her off. ‘I’m tired, Teneff’, she said, and it was true. She didn’t want to think about fighting anymore, or about Marit, or about the war, or the things she had done, or the old man alone on his farm without his sons.
Teneff nodded, understanding that she wished to say no more. To Riven, it almost felt like they were soldiers again, at camp, on the same side. This time, though, only one of them marched toward her death. That thought made her chuckle, low and dark. It was a weary sound, almost more of a grunt than any kind of laugh.
‘I haven’t heard that sound in a long time’, Teneff said. Riven nodded. She felt her anger had slipped away, but it had not been replaced with anything. She simply felt nothing.
‘I’ll try to laugh as much as I can before they sentence me’, Riven said, and she meant it. Teneff’s brow wrinkled with uncertainty, so Riven smiled at her until her expression relaxed.
They said no more. They’d managed to navigate their anger without coming to blows, and even share a smile. It was best left so. Teneff set up her bedroll and tossed another to Riven, who did her best to find a comfortable position with her hands chained to a tree. She did not complain, and Teneff didn’t bother staking her tent. There was no rain, and so it wasn’t worth the effort.
It had rained the night before, and Teneff had built the tent around Riven who had to lay on the ground so her chain didn’t get in the way. Teneff had done this to share shelter with Riven, who she had promised to treat with respect. She had also done this, Riven knew, because Noxian soldiers did not respect those who took shelter while their comrades endured.
Riven was glad that it did not rain. Teneff stomped out the fire and they both positioned themselves within the radius of fading warmth radiated by the coals. When sleep came to Riven, it brought troubled dreams mixed with memory.
Ahead of Riven the land was black, the sky grey, and the clouds were white. The world was dull and colourless. Thoughts swirled in her head with no defined form or meaning. They disappeared when she tried to focus on them and overstayed when she wished them to leave. She lifted her broken blade and rested the flat of it against her chest to drag her fingertips over its pocked and pitted surface.
As she touched the broken tool of war the sword glowed green for a moment, and the first concrete feeling she’d experienced in uncounted days settled within her. It was anger. Boiling, seething anger. Her grip on the hilt tightened and the leather wrappings creaked from the pressure. The splash of green held against her chest was the only colour that seemed to remain in the world. She lowered her arms to her side and her mind wandered, the anger she felt slipped away with the moment, back into the deep grey haze. The colour faded.
She wandered, she thought she might be hungry. She couldn’t tell, it didn’t matter. How long had it been since she’d eaten? She wasn’t sure. ‘The strong will survive’, she told herself, and she didn’t really understand why.
The farmhouse drifted nearby in the dark, it rode on waves of rain and cold air. It was moving, she was sure of it. That was not how she felt a house should behave. Was it avoiding her? She only wanted to ask it a question. She wasn’t sure anymore what that question was.
She was ill. She’d become ill while wandering the valley. She’d gone back again, she couldn’t remember why. Nothing was there anymore, and nothing likely ever would be again. She clung to that idea because something about it seemed certain to her. It lacked the ephemeral malleability that plagued her thoughts and senses. Ever since she’d gone to the valley, anything could change, nothing was certain. A house could choose not to speak with you.
Hunger was a certainty, a painful one. She ached in a way that was both sharp and hollow. Was that why she had come? No, she knew that wasn’t it. The hunger she felt ran deeper than food. Where had her purpose gone? It had fled the world and taken with it all of the colours she could no longer remember.
She fell to her knees in the field, the ground was wet but cold and unploughed, the mud was shallow. She wondered why it wouldn’t have been ploughed, she was sure this place was the field of a farm. For some reason, she thought she might know what a farm looks like.
The house that had been avoiding her approached. When it called out to her, it sounded like voices. She turned her head. A lightless lantern shone into her unfocused eyes, held aloft by a man who was small and shrivelled. Old. Beside him was a woman just as like to a dried fruit as he. She held onto his arm, Riven thought she recognized fear, but that didn’t make sense. She didn’t know what fear was, did she?
As she looked at the pair, the field began to make sense to her. Something that she could grasp and understand was penetrating the endless grey fog that enshrouded her. They were old. Their children were gone. There had been a war. Riven hung her head. The field was unploughed.
‘Why did I survive?’, her mother tongue poured from her mouth, unbidden. She scanned their eyes, desperate for any answer at all. Nothing registered in their expressions. Of course, they could not understand her. She fell forward onto her hands and could see that she held a broken sword. It glowed, green and venomous. Rage built in her chest, her heart thundered, she could hear war drums. With the last of her strength, she hurled the sword into the field, away from the ageing couple that had lost their children, and away from herself. Broken, she landed face down in the freezing, black mud. She hoped she would drown in it.
They’d woken not long after sunrise. More accurately; Riven had woken her and insisted they get moving. They exchanged barbs over a meal of rations and a cup of water each and set out. Despite prior night’s peace, it had been a tense morning. Her old captain, Teneff thought, did not adjust well to captivity.
She followed Riven along the dirt road, more of a path, at the edge of the forest. The leaves of the trees were turning colour, and the air was cool, but the sun was warm on her skin. Teneff led Talz by the massive chain that served as his reins, and she was, in turn, being led by Riven. That galled her. Riven was her prisoner, yet she led with her head held high, manacled wrists crossed in front of her waist while she walked beneath the red and gold boughs of the autumn trees.
‘Eager to get home?’, Teneff asked with practised neutrality. It did the job, Riven tensed, stopped in place and sent a dangerous red glare over her shoulder. Teneff had to look up at Riven to maintain eye contact. That galled her, too. She was not small, particularly for a woman, but Riven was taller. She did not tower, but she definitely loomed.
‘ Home is the other way’, Riven said. Her voice was calm but commanding, the voice she had once used to deliver orders. Teneff and Riven walked side by side then, the chain between them hanging slack, and muscles tensed. Teneff scowled. Riven had not been her commanding officer for a long time.
‘Noxus is your ho-’, Riven yanked hard on her chain, turning Teneff to the side so that she was forced chest to chest with the other woman. They glared hard at one another. Her first instinct was to step back, but that would mean submission. Instead, she dropped Talz’s reins and moved to shove Riven, but found her right hand trapped. Riven had already gripped the chain only one link away from where Teneff held the end, and Teneff knew one hand wouldn’t be enough. The only way out of Riven’s reach was to let go, and she would not do that. She balled her fist, ready to fight.
No blows came, and no words. Riven simply stared at her, commanding her silence, and her first instinct was to obey her captain. Conflict boiled inside Teneff. She wanted badly to put Riven on the ground. Her training, her pride, her anger that Riven had been alive for years and simply never came home, all demanded that she fight. But she did not want to fight her sister, not out of anger.
Riven stepped away first. Teneff bristled, she had not submitted. How dare -- that changed her mind. She pulled hard on Riven’s chain to turn her back around, and only then, once they were face to face, did Teneff smash her fist into Riven’s cheek.
It took Riven less than a full step to recover. She’d barely staggered. Frustrated, Teneff swung again and fed her sister a fistful of the chain that kept them tethered together. It still wasn’t enough, Riven’s head turned from the force, but she barely moved. She didn’t bother to lift her arms. It struck Teneff that Riven hadn’t tried to defend herself, or even avoid her strikes. She roared as she shoved Riven hard by her shoulders. Finally, she earned a few steps back from Riven, but she still didn’t fall.
‘Why won’t you fight me?’, Teneff demanded, spit flew past her teeth, ‘have you lost all respect for me?’ Her head was swirling with unused adrenaline, she didn’t understand. She looked to Riven’s face for an answer.
Behind her messy fringe, Riven’s red eyes focused on Teneff with absolute calm. Blood poured freely from her lips, but she wore a half-smile. To Teneff it looked like an expression of sadness or concern. Pity? Her anger boiled over and she shoved Riven again. This time she only earned one step backwards. ‘Why?’, she demanded again.
‘Do you want me to fight you, sister?’, Riven asked gently. Her sudden calm was infuriating, but it sounded like an honest question. Teneff tensed her muscles, then released. She did not shove Riven again, but no other answer was coming to her easily. She wanted to fight because that was what she did, what she was good at, and because they clearly needed to fight. That was how Noxians made themselves understood. But no, not like that. Not while Riven was chained, she hadn’t fought back at all, and Teneff would not settle for a pity spar. Teneff sighed.
‘I want my sister back’, she said and spat on the ground between them. ‘You are Noxian, why won’t you act like it?’
Riven didn’t answer, instead, she asked ‘Do you know what they call a fistfight in Navori?’, she shook her bangs out of her face and regarded Teneff evenly. In the sun, with bright streaks of red running down her cheek, chin, and throat, she really did look Noxian. She looked to Teneff how she remembered her before the war in Ionia.
‘No…’, Teneff answered slowly. She wasn’t in the mood for foreign wisdom.
‘A Noxian handshake.’ It sat between them for a long moment. Teneff watched lines form around Riven’s eyes and mouth as her smile widened into a grin, and it was contagious. Her own lips twitched upward, and then Teneff snorted before she could push the impulse down. Across the lane from her, Riven laughed freely, eyes closed and posture relaxed. They laughed together for a moment, Riven was staying true to her word. Teneff’s thoughts strayed.
‘Forgive me, sister’, Teneff said for the second time in as many days, ‘I promised you respect-- I lost my head.’ Riven nodded, immovable. Her eyes were locked on Teneff’s.
‘You didn’t want to hurt me’, she said. Teneff huffed, she had the urge to look away, but discipline dictated that she not.
‘Then why do you bleed?’
‘And why did you stop?’ Once Riven put words to it, Teneff knew Riven was right. She had stopped because it felt wrong and because it was not what she had wanted. She exhaled slowly and bent to recover Talz’s chain. ‘You wanted to understand me’, Riven finished.
‘Yes’, Teneff admitted. Riven’s words made sense to her. Fighting was, after all, how Noxians made themselves understood. It was comforting to her that Riven still understood that, despite how much she seemed to have changed.
‘For a long time I felt the same way about the people here’, Riven said, and she made a wide circle with her head. Teneff took up stride beside her, and the pair walked together. ‘I still respect you’, Riven said once they were moving again, ‘but I didn’t go back, and that makes it hard for you to respect me. This place has not made me weak. I found new ways to use my strength and new family.’ Teneff hissed.
'We were-’, Teneff began, Riven stilled her with a gaze.
‘I thought everyone I loved was dead’, she finished. Teneff felt her venom dissipate.
‘There are still three of us’, Teneff told her with a sigh. ‘You, I, and Arrel. We’re Fury Company.’
‘Soon there will be two’, Riven said. Teneff scowled.
‘We'll see’, was all Teneff offered in reply. She didn’t want to argue about it. They had all night to argue once they made camp.
‘Keep pace’, Riven told her, ‘there’s a village we need to pass beyond this forest, then we can follow the river to the coast.’ Teneff nodded her acceptance. Riven would lead, even while chained, but it no longer bothered her.