The Blades and The Gauntlets [Vi x fem!oc]

Chapter XVIII: The Bloodline

Her mind was spinning, trying to make sense of Vi's cruel words, the strange way her body had moved - unnatural, like a twisted reflection of her best-friend. The rain hit her harder now, each drop cold and heavy, but she barely felt it. The world around her seemed to fade into the background, a dull, muffled blur of sound and sensation.

She wanted to scream, to chase after her, but her legs wouldn't move. They felt heavy, rooted to the ground, as though the weight of her shattered heart was dragging her down. This can't be real, she thought. That wasn't Vi... it couldn't have been. Not her.

But despite everything, despite how unnatural it seemed for Vi to do this, she still had the feeling that the words, cruel as they were, carried a truth her best-friend had always meant to say. Maybe in a different world, in a different life, things between them could have been different. But this wasn't that world, and they weren't those people.

There was a time when she believed they could face anything together, survive anything as long as they had each other. But now... now she wasn't sure if that was true anymore.

The world they lived in had never given them a chance - Zaun had twisted them, scarred them in ways that couldn't be undone. And no matter how much Mila had tried to hold on to the hope that they could find their way back to each other, the truth was staring her in the face: they weren't the same anymore. She wasn't the same.

For a moment, her mind completely tuned out everything around her, the streets disappeared and the lights illuminating the pavements suddenly became less visible. Her thoughts wandered to the Council, but strangely, the anger that always burned at the thought of them was gone. The rage she had carried for so long - at Piltover, at her adoptive parents, at the councilors who had the power to change everything but chose not to - it felt... dulled. She had always believed her fury was justified, that it was what kept her sharp, kept her alive.

But this time, she couldn't lean back on that feeling to get up and move. She had always relied on it to push forward, to survive. It was the one thing that had kept her going when everything else had fallen apart. But now, in its absence, she felt... lost.

Her mind was blank, unable to latch onto the familiar fire that once fueled her. She searched for it, tried to conjure up the old resentments. But it was gone. Faded. Like smoke slipping through her fingers.

She hated this feeling. The emptiness. The doubt. Without her anger, who was she? What was left?

Mila's vision blurred, and not just from the rain. Her thoughts circled back to Vi. The kiss they had shared seconds ago, perhaps not real, still lingered on her lips. She tried to remember how it felt, the warmth of her skin, but her mind wasn't able to find those memories.

And as her thoughts spiraled deeper into the void, something flickered at the edges of her consciousness - something faint, like a distant light. It was small, barely noticeable at first, but it was enough to pull her back from the abyss. Her mind caught onto it, clinging to the thread of hope it offered.

And if before it had been rage and fury that kept her going, this time, it wasn't anger at all. This time, the spark that pulled her back was love - the love she had always carried, the love that refused to fade, no matter how much it hurt. Even now, even after everything that had happened, what she felt for Vi still burned deep inside her, unshakable and true. It was part of her, ingrained in her very soul, and no amount of hurt or betrayal could erase it.

It was too much a part of her, too deeply rooted in everything she had become. She wasn't sure if she could ever let it go.

I'll always love her, Mila thought, her heart aching with the truth of it. Even if she's not mine to love anymore.