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Silence.
Complete and utter silence.
Musa heard absolutely nothing. No sound. No fucking sound.
And yet….
And yet she was sure she heard a thousand screams grazing her ears. An anguishing sound that would make anyone beg for quietness and deafness. A deafening silence.
Silence.
No sound.
No heartbeat.
Dead.
Dead dead dead.
Riven was dead.
Riven. Her Riven . Dead. Gone.
Gone.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she started to make out fading buzzing, something so different from the harrowing silence her mind was drowning in that it nearly made her head burst at the seams. As the seconds passed - was it seconds? it felt like an eternity - the buzzing around her became clearer. Still muffled. Still afar. But she could make out bits and pieces of the battle going on around her.
Slowly she could hear again.
The screams.
The pain.
The taunting.
The last one made her look up. Look up to face the devil that mocked her. The ripper that vanglorieted itself on the pain it caused Musa.
Beatrix.
Musa looked at the witch standing in front of her, smirk in full display, teeth shining with an almost maniac gleam.
Killer.
Riven had not been her intended target, but making him the final victim pleased her all the same. Maybe even more so . A quiet voice said in the back of Musa’s mind. Yes, surely this result pleased the auburn girl even more. For what could be better to the psychopath than to finish the destruction she tried to cause in this boy during her first year at Alfea.
The air fairy was as she had always been. Cold. Calculating. Her braided hair was still perfectly pristine, not a hair out of place, despite the battle she had been fighting for hours now, clothes unscatthed, her lips painted bloody red.
Bloody red. Like spilled blood. Like Riven’s blood.
But there was no blood. He had not fallen with his twin swords in hand, slaying demons.
Burned.
She had burned his heart.
His heart had been his death.
Because he hadn’t been her target, he hadn’t been the one she was seeking to end, as much as she feasted upon said outcome. It had been Musa. She had been trying to kill Musa.
Mission accomplished.
For although it wasn’t she who now layed on the ground unmoving, the empath felt dead anyway.
Trix hadn’t managed to hit her body, her heart. Yet she had destroyed it anyway.
Musa hadn’t seen him coming. She was sure not even Beatrix had. The empath had been too focused on trying to draw any energy she might have had to fight against the air fairy, for she knew this was a battle to the death.
But she had been weak, drained already from holding the burned ones at bay, from invading the mind of one too many corrupted solarian soldiers who had decided that fighting for Rosalind was worth more than being a human being.
She had been weak. And when she fell to the ground, she had been too slow to try and prevent the auburn haired fairy from raising her hands - already shining and cracking with electricity - and pointing straight to Musa’s heart.
Nothing would have stopped the lighting from hitting Musa’s chest.
Nothing but Riven jumping straight in front of her.
She hadn’t processed it at first. One second she was expecting blinding pain, and on the other she stood face to face with the most horrendous scene she could have imagined.
Riven. On his knees. Taking a bolt of energy straight into his heart.
She thought she may have screamed. His name. A plea. Anything. Anything that would erase that nightmarish vision in front of her eyes. Erase it from her mind.
But it didn’t. For Riven still stood there, defiantly facing the monster that burned him - the monster that smiled wickedly and cackled like the devil when she realized who was her unexpected victim . He stood there, like one of those stupid heroes Musa had hated in her childhood. The only movement he did was to turn. To turn to her. And Musa realized that she never knew pain, not truly. Because nothing, nothing in her life, had hurt as badly as seeing Riven look at her as he died. Because that was what he was doing. Dying.
Leaving her. Being taken away from her.
He stared at her, with those eyes she had grown to love. The eyes she woke to every morning. They looked at her and begged. Begged her to forgive him. To forgive him for saving her at the cost of his life. To forgive him for being selfless - or maybe he was being selfish, for Riven would rather let the world burn, would rather die than let her die, maybe he did this more for himself than for her. Maybe he couldn’t bear to live in a world without her in it. She just didn’t understand how he thought she could.
His eyes begged and begged. And in the end they spoke. Because that had always been one of her favorite things about Riven. While his face and attitude were closed off, his eyes had always screamed what was in his heart. and right now they screamed one thing and one thing only:
I love you.
And there he stood, victim of a monster, staring at her, begging her to remember his love for her...until he didn’t. Until the devil burned every drop of life he had and he fell to the side. Limp. Lifeless. Green eyes, void and unseeing. Staring eternally into the sky, the energy that burned behind them now gone. Destroyed
Green eyes Musa had loved. Green eyes that had promised her the moon, the world. A future.
She had stared, and stared. Numb. Incapable of anything but crawling to him, ignorant of the stones and branches that digged at her knees and hands, cutting skin. Incapable of anything but cradling him in her chest, hands trembling, vision blurring, slowly lowering her head to put her ear above his heart.
Silence.
No beat. His heart was dead. Killed.
And so was hers.
Beatrix stood upon her. Smug. Practically giddy with everything that was happening. Content in waiting, in seeing her prey grow more and more defeated by the second. The feeling of victory that emanated from her was pungent, sickening. For how could Musa fight, when her future lay upon her. Dead. Gone.
Stolen.
Beatrix’s sickening sugary voice teased and mocked Musa, a sweetness to it that nauseated the mind fairy. She spoke and spoke, beating Musa’s tarnished heart more and more, twisting the invisible knife deeper Into the empath’s chest.
‘My my, how the mighty have fallen. Not that loner boy here was ever mighty. Poor Riven boy, so so starved for attention, for a drop of love, he was willing to die for it. So weak. So pathetic. Look at your lover boy now Musa. You did this to him.’
Musa never cared about what Beatrix said before, knew that the air fairy’s mind was so warped and twisted that all she knew how to do was devour the happiness in others. But, yet, the words were sharp and stung like poison in the empath’s veins.
After what felt like forever and no time at all, Musa managed to look away from Riven’s face and lock eyes with the bitch, and then a sudden thought came to her.
She’s going to die today. I’ll kill her.
The thought wasn’t said in a shout. Actually, it came to her so calmly and normally, that had she been in her normal state of mind she might have been worried.
But she wasn’t in her right state of mind. And Beatrix was going to die.
Maybe the air fairy noticed this. Noticed the change, because for all the madness and mania that still ran in her eyes, she now stood straighter, more guarded. If she was a sane person one could say she had become slightly worried.
Musa didn’t know how she looked as she rose, limbs no longer shaking, held up by the burning determination she felt in her bones. There was deadly patience in her mind. A killing calmness as she stalked toward the devil.
Musa couldn’t see her own face but she knew - she felt - that her eyes were burning purple. Brighter than they ever had. More vicious than she knew they could.
She wasn’t preparing herself for a fight. She was preparing herself for a slaughter.
The slaughter of that who killed her heart.
The air fairy started to raise her arm, electricity already shining at the tip of her fingers, ready to attack. However, she never got far, for suddenly she could no longer move it. In fact, her whole body was paralyzed, trapped into position, unable to do anything but stay still. When the redhead faced the empath she realized why.
Mind controlled.
The empath was mind controlling her. Stealing away her body and mind’s free will and making it her own.
Maybe for the first time in her life the evil fairy feared. For she thought killing Riven had killed any fight left in Musa, any good emotion that the empath could use to fight against her.
But it wasn't the good emotions feeding Musa’s powers. It was the anger, the sadness, the despair. It was the hatred and the absolute want to burn the world that fueled the empath.
And burn she did.
In the end of that day, on that little forgotten corner of the battlefield, two lives were taken, yet no drop of blood had been spilled.
For Musa did not wish to kill Beatrix with blades, that would be a kindness the air fairy did not deserve. She killed the fairy with the one thing that would hurt the most.
Her own mind.
She twisted the girl’s thoughts so badly that they hurt. That they cut. That they destroyed. She inflicted in her enemy's mind the worst nightmares she could have ever imagined. Some even worse than that. She saw Beatrix's mouth open in a shirking with no sound, feeling a pain only she could see, only she could feel. Musa saw as the air fairy’s eyes and nose began bleeding, as she started convulsing and shaking.
She was being destroyed inside and out. Musa was destroying her very putrid and corrupted soul. She killed the devil without lifting a finger.
The empath saw when the battle was over, when Beatrix’s body tumbled to the side, as unmoving and dead as that of Musa’s boyfriend.
Riven.
Unblinking. Unfeeling. Musa turned to look at the body by her feet.
Silence.
Gone.
Her Riven was gone.
Her future was gone.
His laughter, his scent, his smile, his voice. His disheveled morning hair, his snarking remarks. His kisses, his moans, his touch. All the promises he made her.
Stolen.
Stolen from her.
‘We're endgame Pixie. You, me? We’re forever babe’
Stolen.
The weight of his jacket - the one she barely ever stopped wearing since they started dating - seemed to double, bringing her down to her knees.
Slowly, reluctant, she stretched her arm to touch his face.
Cold.
Dead.
The idiot had jumped to save her from the lightning bolt. But now he was gone and unable to save her from the pain of losing him.
He saved her body only for her to lose her soul.
His head was cradled in her lap.
She looked at the wound in his chest. The burned skin there made her stomach churn. Her hands shaked as she gingerly touched the burned spot. The spot her head or hand had laid on during so many nights and midday naps. The spot that guarded his heart.
Burned and destroyed. Not a single drop of blood. But destroyed nonetheless.
She wanted to kill Beatrix all over again.
She looked at his face. A face she had memorized every inch, every mole, every dimple.
His eyes hurt the most.
Eyes that stared at her, but not as she remembered, the life behind them now long gone. Staring at them she could almost hear it. His last parting words for her.
The both of them were in Alfea’s hall as the headmasters barked orders, telling each student what to do. How to survive.
He had looked at her then, those emerald eyes of his grounding her, as if he was the empath projecting calm into her head. He had gifted her with one of those breathtaking smiles of his, encircling her waist and bringing her impossibly closer to him. Resting their foreheads together he whispered to her:
‘Tomorrow is the beginning of the rest of our lives Shortcake. We win today and tomorrow we celebrate. Today we win so that when our kids come to Alfea they don’t have to face the terrors we did. Tomorrow love, you’re all mine.’
He had kissed her then. With the passion, the desperation, of a dying man. He kissed her as if trying to embed his promise into her body.
He had only stopped kissing her when Sky came to fetch him. The battle had begun. As he parted he looked back at her. One last look. To guard it with him during the dark hours of the battle.
A part of her wondered. Wondered what went through his mind in those last moments. In that last moment, where he had decided to take the blow meant for her. That moment where he realized he would never open his eyes anymore. That moment where he realized that their kids would never come to Alfea. That moment where he realized that all his promises were gone.
A kiss had been the last thing he gave her. Along with a promise of tomorrow. Of a future.
Stolen.
Stolen.
Stolen.
Until today, the entire magical world still hears the story of how on that fateful day on the Alfea battlefield, a single mind fairy, a defeated little thing, on her knees, broken, became involved by a tornado of magic so strong that it nearly shielded her from the view of outsiders.
Musa never noticed. Never cared. Too lost in her emotions to see when the scream she let out - a thing so raw and painful that people claim to still hear the echoes of it in their nightmares - became a burst of magic that swept Alfea entirely and left not a single burned one alive.