Chapter Text
A soft tangle of fingers hung between them. With their hands bound behind their backs, they had to lean forward and shift their arms uncomfortably to hold hands, but it didn’t matter. Riven’s shoulders ached, that didn’t matter. She was missing the tips of her fourth and fifth fingers on her left hand, and that didn’t matter either.
What mattered was the hand tangled up in hers. Beneath the blood, it was soft, cool, and whole. Unmarred. Riven squeezed that hand as gently as she could while still imparting all of what the gesture meant to her.
'I love you’
Irelia squeezed back. They looked at each other. Irelia’s eyes, blue and glassy, reflected images of the soldiers that stood around them. Riven looked past them, just at Irelia’s eyes. It was the last time she would see them, and they both knew. It was on Irelia’s face, in the small brim of water that lined the bottom lids of her eyes, and in the subtle quivering of her bottom lip. Riven’s vision blurred. She shut her eyes tightly and leaned into Irelia to kiss her. The contact was brief and bittersweet.
The butt of a rifle slammed into the side of her head, knocking her against the concrete wall behind the bench. Her ears rang, and she saw stars. But, mostly, she saw the pained look on Irelia’s face. A soldier grabbed Irelia’s arm and pulled her roughly to her feet. The barrel of a gun between her shoulderblades guided her away. Riven watched her go. She held her head high, and measured her steps with poise, as she always had. The picture of dignity to the last.
She disappeared behind a door, and Riven swallowed hard. The knot that formed in her throat was craggy and sore. In all her years, and on both sides of the conflict, rarely had Riven shed tears. She’d always imagined that she’d die in battle and that her body would fail before her resolve. But, as she sat alone at the end, waiting, even she could not suppress the sorrow she felt.
BANG
She inhaled deeply and let her tears fall. She no longer had anyone to be brave for. The soldiers came for her and she rose to her feet and followed them lifelessly. When she passed through the doorway Irelia was lying motionless where she’d fallen. Her knees still supported her, and she was doubled over. Her hair fanned out on the concrete floor in a slowly growing pool of black blood that leaked from a hole in her temple.
Riven’s throat tightened, and her eyes darted from her lover to the man who stood over her, still holding the pistol that had taken her life. Coals smouldered in her guts, giving breath to what little fire Riven had left, but she held it. She waited for the soldiers to push her to her knees, and for the man who was her lover’s killer to step forward. And when he did, she lunged at him.
The shock was apparent on his face as she rushed past the barrel of his gun and slammed her forehead into his nose, flattening the bone into his face with a choked squelch. She barely registered the pain in her own cracked skull as he screamed. She had already hooked her foot behind his legs and swept them from underneath him. By the time the soldiers reacted, Riven had her boot on his throat. She stared hard into his bulging eyes, willing the light to go out, willing herself to achieve this one last thing before she reunited with her lover. He aimed his pistol up at her.
BANG
Stars against blackness, and searing red pain. She was not dead, but she could not see. The bullet had gone up through her jaw and out her cheek. She regained her balance and stomped down again on where his neck ought to have been. The room erupted in noise. Her chest burned, and she felt hot and wet. Bullet after bullet passed through her chest, fired from the rifles of the soldiers. She could not breathe, her muscles grew weak rapidly. Her blood was not pumping. She tried to lift her foot again to stomp down on the man, but she fell backwards and hit her head on the floor.
The blackness consumed her, the sound of gunshots slowly drifted away into a ringing, and then silence, leaving her to remember the feeling of Irelia’s hand in her own. She clung to that memory, and as Riven’s life slipped away, she wished with all of her heart that they could have a second chance.