Numb to the Feeling (Riven x OC)

I need you to show me love

She'd left Alfea that day and never looked back, deciding to finish her schooling back in her home realm. Her parents hadn't asked, preferring her home anyway, and even if they had, she wouldn't have told. And now fifteen years had gone by and life looked very different.

JJ never heard from him again. Not that she'd expected him to call, but a part of her always wished that he'd appear somewhere other than her dreams. Alas it wasn't meant to be and for a while she'd felt horribly alone. That crushing realisation of knowing how he numbed her off most feelings like a drug and turned her into a shell was still addictive even now, and she itched and craved that fix like she depended on it.

And she hated to admit that the loneliness never quite went away. Even with her husband and two kids, that lingering feeling of being by yourself and alone, never fully left her. Of course she knew, especially now that she was older, that her and Riven were never meant to be. Even if it hadn't gotten that destructive, she doubted that they would've ever lasted long, but there was always that what if.

What if she'd stayed?

That thought bothered her the most, and even now as she looked out onto the porch of her house and onto the fields where her children played, did she wonder if she made the right choice. JJ loved her children, but there was always that horrible thought that no mother should ever have. What if she would've loved her kids with Riven more? Would they have had kids at all? Should they even, given how they hurled sour insulting words and fists at each other like it was nothing before the fuse lit up a fiery passion that tangled them naked between sheets.

The guilt was often too much, but whenever her husband would ask she simply pushed it to the side. As if he'd want to hear about a long lost love anyway. She always had to correct herself and scold the thought. They were abusive, but he was still missing to her, and he was still a form of love, even now, though not one you could ever maintain well.

For that's what he was to her. Riven was the one that she lost and always desperately wanted to find again, even though she made no real attempt to because she couldn't do that to herself. At night she'd often stay up and watch the stars, searching for something that told her he still existed. Though she knew he did. Riven was somewhere, even if she didn't know where, for the moment he no longer would be, she'd know.

He was still there, all those years, in her heart, ingrained so deep that no physical wound he could've caused would've scarred quite as badly. After all that time, he was still so present that she yearned for him, even when she knew she shouldn't. JJ shouldn't want any of him, and the fact that she did made her close to physically ill. How could something so horrible still pull you in so much?

It's not that she hated the life she got, and it's not like she thought her life with him would've been any better. If they'd never had that terrifying realisation of how far they'd gone, then their life that was bound and woven together would've been a very dangerous thread to walk.

Yet she still wondered what it would've been like to remain unaware of it all so that she could stand before him once more.

Riven asked himself the same thing.

He wasn't married nor did he have children, but he had a girlfriend that he convinced himself he loved. And maybe he did love her, but never could he love like he had with her. It was far from the ideal love to have, nor would it have been one that would've lasted, for eventually the curtain would've fallen anyway, but it fucking hurt him, even now. Even now, he convinced himself still that he loved her. When they'd first caught eyes and decided to be each other's crushing end, he'd never expected that the remainder of his life would be spent hurting whenever he breathed, for it shouldn't have.

Time was meant to heal all wounds, not cut them deeper until it was all too much.

He nearly reached out to her once. He'd been so close, but he pulled back when he came to notice that she was married. And whilst it stirred a familiar old anger and jealousy in Riven, he wasn't going to impose on that, for he'd learned and come to know better with time.

So he left her alone, assuming she was happy. Of course he couldn't have known that she waited for him worlds away.

And many years later, as decades passed, so did they. It was strange, for they died on the same day, hours apart but nevertheless so eerily similar in time, as if their hearts knew to give in to the brokenness they felt.

Riven passed away first, hopelessly alone and never quite recovered from the roughness of the barely there relationship he'd had with the beautiful auburn haired girl so long ago. She'd been right the moment they met, that she was not one he'd ever forget, even when his life was slowly fading away until he wasn't breathing.

JJ died not long after, her children and husband by her side, but even with them around, holding her, she felt so isolated and it drowned her, and she could only think about Riven pulling her back out of the water.

But he never did, and so she was gone, succumbing to the darkness that was death.

And finally, they went completely numb to all feeling. 

*That would be the end... it's a short one, I know. My other Riven fic is way longer (and I have another in the works), but thank you so much for reading and all the love, and I promise not everything I write will end on such an angsty note aha x*