This fic basically follows the 4kids version, (dialogue, voices, etc.) except that Icy, Darcy, and Stormy are called "the Trix" (in the 4kids version they're just "those witches") and they are sisters. (As opposed to 4kids where they are just best friends. I think.) The inspiration and themes for this fic come from tears-in-rain's fics: "Brothers at Arms," "Band of Brothers," "Restless Nights and Revelations," and "His Strength, His Weakness." I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend all of them. They are AMAZING. (Particularly "Brothers at Arms" and "Band of Brothers"; they tell seasons 1 and 2 in the specialists' perspectives, as well as adding extra storylines. Seriously, they're the best Winx Club stories ever made. You'd be an idiot to pass them up.) So, yeah. Enjoy!

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Darcy rolled over onto her side and read the digital clock; 2:47 a.m. Her eyes widened in panic. She was late. Not good. Her sisters hated it when she was late. She sat up from her bed with a start and the bedsprings creaked. She began mentally cursing herself for her indiscretion; Riven would surely wake up now. Having been abandoned by his mother and forced to live on the streets, he had never been a deep sleeper; he was constantly wary of any kind of danger. And yes, as she suspected, Riven abruptly opened his eyes and jumped out of the bed.

"Darcy…?" He squinted, confused. "What're you doing up so late?" She sighed. She might as well tell him the truth; it wasn't like he could really do much while under her spell, anyway.

"I'm going to see my sisters." His eyes widened in realization.

"Oh." He looked at the time. "Babe, I've gotta get back to Red Fountain." Darcy felt a strange wave of panic wash over her.

"No!" She instinctively screamed. She then kicked herself for sounding so needy. Replacing her tone with a take-charge voice, she demanded. "Stay here, puppy dog."

He shook his head soundly. "Darcy, you know I want to stay, but I can't. I have to get back to Red Fountain before they notice I've been gone all night." Despite his reassurance, Darcy's unexplained distress hadn't tided over. And apparently, neither had his.

She frowned. This was bad. When she first started dating him (if you could call it that), she hadn't realized that Riven would be this tough to control. Her powerful mind-control spell started off at a moderate level, just in case; she had never dreamed that she'd have to increase it. After all, she'd never had to before. But Riven was wild, untamed, and had a fierce determination that she had never seen.

"Puppy dog," she began, her eyes turning purple, increasing the spell's power further, "you will listen to me."

She grinned in satisfaction when his eyes, in response, turned the same shade. By the time she stopped, the spark of defiance in his eyes had dulled.

"Sure, Darcy. Anything you say, babe." Her heart swelled, and she reeled back in horror. None of her other guys made her feel like this. Could he be a threat to her? Before she got the chance to dwell on the thought, she remembered the meeting. Her sisters would kill her! (Possibly literally.)

"I have to go." And with that, she darted out of her room, without even putting on her sun glasses and not bothering to close the door.

As she was running through the winding halls of the Cloud Tower castle, she cursed herself for her weakness. What was it about him? Maybe if she used her magic on herself, she could—

Her train of thought was interrupted by her arrival of her destination. (A.N. It sounds like the people that talk over the intercom on airplanes; I know. I couldn't think of a better way to put it.) She would have time to consider this later. Taking a deep breath, she undid the lock with her dark magic and tentatively opened the door, only to meet the glare of her two sisters, who were, of course, already there.

"Why are you late?" Icy sharply demanded.

"Yeah," Stormy's irritated voice piped up, "we've been waiting for, like, a half an hour already!" Darcy decided that the best way to confront with this was intimidation; to show them that she was in charge.

"Oh, stop your witching. I had to deal with Riven." Icy growled:

"You know, he's really turning out to be a loser. But don't worry." She grinned wickedly with malice in her voice, along with a touch of insanity. "You won't need him for much longer." Darcy froze.

"Huh?" She kicked herself for sounding like an idiot.

"When we get the ultimate power, we won't need him anymore," Icy replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Darcy would've been embarrassed if she wasn't so busy trying to figure out why she suddenly felt loss. 'Well,'she figured, 'best to act now while I still have time and ponder later.'

"Oh, I don't know," Darcy said, trying to sound dismissive, "we could probably find some use for him."

"Nah, why bother? We'll have the whole world at our feet," Stormy relished. "We can make anyone do anything."

Icy cackled in response, and Darcy pretended to go along with it, even though she knew it wouldn't be that easy. Controlling people's wants and needs and making them your own was difficult; she would know. But they didn't.

Stormy, because of her power over…well, storms (their parents obviously weren't very creative when naming either of her sisters) had always had a bad temper, and thus their parents were constantly running around, trying desperately to make her happy.

While not very smart (to say the least), she was undeniably powerful, and that was all anyone (except perhaps that annoying Miss Griffin) cared about.

As opposed to her sister, Icy was extremely clever, but she was also far colder and more ruthless; her heart, unlike Stormy's fiery, impulsive one, was frozen solid. The spoiled ice princess got whatever she wanted…or else. That was the unwritten rule.

Meanwhile, Darcy was far more subtle than the other two. Controlling darkness, she would stealthily slip into the shadows, unnoticed. "Unnoticed" would be the key word. She was a wallflower, and because of that she never got any attention; not from her parents, teachers, sisters, classmates…no one.

Her sisters wouldn't know how to make people see things their way, because they never had to. They never had to negotiate for anything; they just got whatever they wanted, and they assumed that once they took control that no one would rebel, that everyone would simply do whatever they told them to do. Darcy was not so foolhardy.

"Come on, ladies," Icy commanded in an all-business tone of voice, "let's conjure up the Whithspearian Crystals." (A.N. I have absolutely no clue if I spelled that right.)

Darcy sighed. It wasn't that she didn't want to dominate everyone; she was all for that, but right then her powers were drained from trying to control Riven.

Riven.

There was that foreign feeling again.

'Wait a minute,' her mind clicked, 'this sounds like…' no, it couldn't be. But then, what else…

No. There had to be another explanation. She couldn't actually love him…

…Could she?

…Well, even if she did, it didn't matter. She knew that her sisters would never approve. They'd destroy her. Focusing the scarce amount of power she had left, she summoned the dark crystal.

Their mission, what they had worked their entire lives for, was more important than her feelings. Those would have to be put on hold.

Like Always.

Riven sighed. Darcy went off with her sisters, again, leaving him all alone. God, sometimes he really couldn't stand her.

Still, for some unfathomable reason, he liked Darcy. So why did this keep happening?

'It's not important,' he convinced himself. 'I just need to get back to Red Fountain.'

But he couldn't go. Darcy had ordered him not to, and he trusted her. Well, kind of.

But then again, what was really waiting for him back at Red Fountain, anyway? Those annoying classes, his ex-friends…

His ex-friends. God, were they annoying! He couldn't believe that he'd ever thought they were cool.

Timmy's know-it-all attitude, Brandon's idiocy, Sky's annoying moral compass, they were all so…so…

For some reason, he was finding it difficult to think; the words in his head were slurred. Definitely disorienting, and foreign up until just a bit ago. Well, he considered honestly, it was true that he'd changed a lot over the past few months, but...

...but...

For a brief moment, Riven won over the spell, if not just a little bit. It was enough, though, to see that just maybe Darcy wasn't that great, and that just maybe he was treating his friends cruelly, not to mention Musa...

...Musa...

And just as quickly as the moment came, it went.

'I have to stay here,' was now the only thought that ran through Riven's mind. His eyes wandered to Darcy's bedside table, and saw Darcy's hippie-styled sun glasses sitting uselessly on it. Temptation rose again.

'I'm sure Darcy would want this,'he reasoned with himself. 'She probably wouldn't be mad if I just got up to give it to her…'

'No,'another side of him interrupted. 'She told you to stay here for a reason. And besides, if she really wanted it, she'd have come back for it.'

Riven had to admit that that was a good point. Regardless, he would find some reason to give it to her. He refused to allow himself to stay there all night, no matter how much he liked her.

But then, if he didn't want to be there, why wasn't he just getting up and leaving, like he used to? Since when did he ever listen when people told him to do something? Never.

…Then why was he listening now?

It was a puzzling question that he, for a second, didn't know the answer to. So far, all they had really done was get into outrageous, almost violent fights that made the Cloud Tower Witches freeze for several minutes and stare at them in awe, and then they'd make-up and, as a result, have make-up sex. Like last night, for example. Was that normal? He was almost positive that it wasn't.

But that new side of him that he hadn't known existed until a few months ago, the one that had gotten him into so much trouble, refused to acknowledge that.

'You're listening to her because you like her,'was the ever-persistent voice's sound answer. Even though that didn't seem quite right to him, he didn't have the energy to argue with himself further, so he went back to trying to figure out an excuse to bring Darcy her glasses.

'She was distracted,'he finally came up with. 'She didn't want to be late to that meeting.'

He nodded, content with his explanation. Content enough, anyway.

Grabbing the glasses, he finally walked out of the room, but only made it two steps before walking back in. For once, he decided that he was going to let his guard down. Maybe that voice was right; maybe what he had with Darcy was something different; after all, no matter how much they fought, they always come back to each other. If this was going to work, he had to start trusting her more.

Eventually, he fell back asleep, and dreamt of good times with his friends and Musa's navy blue eyes were watching him kindly. When he woke up the next morning, he couldn't remember what exactly it was he was dreaming of, but did remember it being the best night's sleep he'd had in a while.

"Hey," Brandon (the real Brandon; they've switched their names back already) said casually to Timmy, "did you notice that Riven wasn't there today in strategy and battle class?"

Timmy frowned, his voice clearly displeased, "Yeah. I did."

"Come to think about it, he's been doing that a lot lately." Timmy sighed. Sometimes the squire could be a little slow on the uptake.

"Yeah, he has."

"Who has been doing what?" Prince Sky asked, setting his tray down next to theirs. They always sat together at lunch. At one point, so did Riven. But these days, he was nowhere to be found.

"Riven," Timmy answered. "We were saying how he hasn't been around much lately."

"That's true," Sky agreed slowly, careful to stay neutral on the subject.

Brandon, however, felt no reason to be.

"Yeah. That jerk." His remark earned him a pointed stare from Timmy and a blank face from Sky. "What?" He shrieked, directing his opinion at Timmy. "Lately he's been a first-class bitch!"

"I know that, but that doesn't mean we should just give up on him!" Timmy protested heatedly.

"Sure it does," Brandon argued, "right Sky?" The ladder, in return, threw him an annoyed look.

"Let's just change the subject," Sky intervened.

"No!" Both yelled at him, simultaneously.

"Dude, I am really getting sick of you being so annoyingly peaceful!" (A.N. My friend and I used to always get into feuds, and my other friend was the way that Sky is. We called her "annoyingly peaceful," too.) Brandon exploded. "Just pick a side, already!"

"Yeah?" Sky countered. "Well I'm sick of you guys arguing about Riven!"

"Why?"

"Because," he hissed in response, "what happens with Riven happens, and there's nothing we can do about it. I don't like it anymore than you, but it's the truth."

"No, it's not!" Timmy exclaimed, finding his voice again. "There's got to be something we can do!"

Sky's eyes softened a little at his friend's loyal declaration.

"Fine," Sky finally relented. "If you can figure out what's gotten into him, then go for it." Timmy smiled. "But," he warned, "if you don't find anything then you're gonna have to let this go, Timster, no matter how much you don't want to." He sighed and quietly added, "No matter how much we don't want to."

Timmy nodded solemnly.

"I know. But don't worry; I will find something. I'm sure of it."

Hours later at Alfea, when the stars shone brightly in the night sky, Musa was lying on her bed, thinking. Not about Riven, of course. Why would she be thinking about him, anyway? It wasn't like she liked him or anything…

…right?

She shook it off. Of course right. Why would she like an arrogant, chauvinist jerk? There was nothing remotely appealing about him.

Musa sighed, hoping that if she told herself that enough times, she'd believe it. Or, at the very least everyone else would believe it.

She slammed her fist on her pillow, frustrated. Why did she let herself like him in the first place?

Then, she got an idea. Maybe, if she faced this honestly and went through the reasons why, she could finally forget about him and go to sleep. It was a long shot, but worth a try.

She took a deep breath.

Well, first off, he was honest. Yes, that could make him a jerk sometimes, but he always said what he thought; didn't feel awkward about being himself. He knew that he wasn't rich like most of the people at Red Fountain, and instead of being ashamed of it and attempting to be something he wasn't coughBrandoncough, he freely admitted it. He understood that it would leave him open for taunts, and he didn't care. He was proud.

And he was smart. Probably smarter than all of them, in fact, except maybe Timmy. Not just smart, though; street smart. He understood how things worked outside of a computer. He was clever, witty. He could have been better than all of them, if given half the chance.

Plus, he was…well, no, not cute…you couldn't really describe Riven as cute…he was hot. Yes, much more fitting. And speaking of fit, boy was he ever! He had more muscle than the other guys, no doubt because he had to do way more hard labor than they did as a kid. Oh, and that was another thing. He was a survivor, a fighter. You could tell from the scars on his back.

…Not that she'd ever seen him without a shirt on; she heard about the scars from one of the other Red Fountain guys. She wasn't saying that she didn't want to see him shirtless, but…

She stopped herself. That would never happen in a million years.

All of a sudden, Musa's breath got quivery.

Well, this idea had sure worked out great. She was almost crying; even more upset and restless than she'd been before.

Sniffling and wiping her unshed tears, she went to plan b; pulling out her iPod and listening to sad songs to try and mend her broken heart over the end of a relationship that never existed.