Trapped In Your Bleeding Heart (Riff x Reader)

Chapter Thirty Eight - The Rumble

I was running. Sprinting. Sprinting until my throat went dry and my feet went numb, and it was easier to pant than to breathe. My feet slipped on wet pavement and mudded lawns. My hair dripped and curled with rain water. My clothes stuck to my body. I reached my limits, and then ran past them, heaving, getting nauseous, and then getting embarrassed, and still running.

If you handed me a map, I wouldn't be able to point out the abandoned church in No-Man's Land with a gun to my head. I was going off of instinct alone. That, and the yells of two fearsome gangs beating the tar out of each other. I staggered through an alley, around a corner, and saw groups of cars all parked around a building. The church.

Maybe I wasn't too late. Maybe there was still time to stop this. What was my plan? I was working on it. But I had too much love, too much pride. Blood on both sides. A will stronger than any man's. Call it what you want, I wasn't going to let these boys tear each other apart.

I passed in between two cars, and saw it. Riff's beat-up truck, parked on the curb. Despite my suspicions that this was the right place, seeing confirmation quickened my heart rate beyond what the cardio had done.

My pace quickened as I found the nearest window and peered in. Nothing. But there was a light, a hanging bulb swinging, illuminating a staircase.

There was a basement.

Following the perimeter for an entrance, running into two locked doors, I ended up back at the window. So, I did what any insane and desperate girl would do. I took one of my pretty black shoes off and broke the glass. Climbing inside was my next obstacle, and I was glad no one was around to see the humbling struggle. But I was in. That's all that mattered.

Now I could really hear it. Animals. Grunts and yells and cusses, thumps and pounds, likely collisions with the walls and floors. Nervous now,  even more than before, I made my way down the stairs.

No.

Maria, I'm sorry.

It was a bloodbath. Broken noses and unconscious bodies and—-Riff?

Where was Riff?

In a panic, I searched every face in the storm of boys, but it was all a blur of thrown fists and toppling collisions. Then, someone staggered back towards the stairs, reeling from a shove. It was Ice.

"Ice!" I called, stepping down two more stairs.

The way he looked at me encased more terror than I'd ever seen on a Jet's face before, and the wide, frozen gaze alone sent chills down my spine and dread seeping through my stomach.

"Dolly?" He mouthed, but it was lost in the sea of violence.

And faster than a bullet from a gun, faster than I could warn, a Shark broke out of the sea and tackled Ice. I shrieked, and it must have been loud, because the Puerto Rican man looked up at me, eyes changing from blind rage to something between confusion and pity.

Before anything could be said, Ice took the opportunity to grab the upper hand, and slammed the Shark into the ground. Clearly, I wasn't going to get information here. So, I traversed it.

I parted the sea.

And as I walked, the battle slowed. Punches halted, and people stepped out of my way, creating a path of quieted war. And now Chino stood before me, blocking the way. His expression was unreadable, different from the rest of the fighters. The dread within me spread down my arms, and through my fingers.

"What?" I asked, voice breaking, and I didn't know anything, and somehow knew everything.

"It's—" He choked on a name, and I understood.

My hand found his shoulder, and I pushed him to the side. Despite my lack of pressure, he fumbled back, and collapsed against a wall.

And that revealed it.

"Oh—" My own voice caught in my throat, and a sob replaced it. "No," the room stilled, "no..."

My vision blurred, and I was grateful for it. But my knees buckled all the same; the images burning my memory, branding my mind.

It was Riff.

It was a pool of blood.

It was the end of everything.

And who stood over him but Bernardo, weeping like a fallen angel, eyes glossed and full of hatred and grief, somehow swirled together into a new look I had never seen.

But before I could scream. Before I could cry, before I could mourn. Tony came rushing past me, switchblade in hand, too fast to stop.

And Bernardo stared. Just stared straight ahead, not reacting to the knife that had plunged into his chest.

Now I did scream. I was on the ground, cold, numb and somehow aching, watching helplessly as Bernardo took an unsteady step forward, towards Riff, towards me, before plummeting to the ground.

The impact was thick. Lifeless. He laid face down, a grounded statue. Tony was the next to collapse, but not out of injury, out of disease. His body seized him to the ground, and there he laid, quivering, hand still clenched, as if it still held the switchblade he had left in Bernardo.

The world was silent. The fight had stopped.

And for a moment, it felt like time itself stopped.

But then it came back.

Riff rolled over. Blinked. Heart beating. Wounds bleeding.

Alive.

Author's note: eveil author has chang of heart and makes love interest live *yayy*