Just a small piece about a story idea that I wanted to write down for quick some exploration. Contains mentions of Yuri shipping.
Swords, scimitars and battle-axes slashed viciously while armor-clad bodies lunged forward, their footsteps thundering against the mat. Men and women bellowed in defiance upon completing their swings, and then roared once more while their bodies snapped back to their starting place like coiled springs that had been released after being stretched to their very limits.
"Again!" Barked a feminine voice harshly, and the new recruits rushed to obey the tall woman's order. The white-haired drill sergeant wandered across the room, examining the forms of the soldiers as they all attacked simultaneously or retreated from an imaginary foe as per her instructions. The drill sergeant occasionally pausing to give advice to the worst fighters of the batch.
"Rohan, you are overextending too much when you're attacking," Riven commented dryly, walking behind a sweating lean man.
"Wrists up, Layla, you are supposed to protect you face from blows, not find openings in your own defense for your opponents to exploit," She barked at the daughter of a nobleman that was visibly slacking off.
"Slark, if you open your legs any wider than that you won't be able to move, much less dodge to the side when somebody tries to strikes you." Riven sighed, rolling her eyes at a lanky young man whose face instantly flared with a mixture of anger and embarrassment at her reprimand.
The white-haired swordswoman spent a few more minutes pointing out the evident flaws in the stances of her students and showing them how to properly wield their weapons, before she finally had enough and decided to call it a day.
"Alright! Grab your gear and head to the main building for your Combat Tactics lesson with Sergeant Mauler. I will see you all tomorrow, same time, same place. Fucking practice before coming here this time though, or I'll have to whip you into shape myself, and you aren't going to like that!" She threatened, earning varying looks of concern from the leaving recruits and fearful expressions from those amongst them that had crossed her in the past.
"They are utter shit. The Ionians are gonna cut them down like weeds and send them back home inside coffins." A snarky voice muttered from beside the red-eyed drill sergeant. Katarina was standing near Riven, leaning against the wall, her expression was stormy and her emerald orbs were looking particularly somber and pensive.
Riven just nodded, there was no denying that her students could barely swing their preferred weapons without injuring the person that was standing next to them during practice. They weren't ready for the slaughter fields of Ionia, yet Riven knew that such a mundane reason wouldn't stop the Grand General from shipping them to the front lines to use them as cannon fodder against the dwindling defenders.
"I've heard that Darius will be the one leading this lot," Katarina laughed humorlessly, following behind Riven as the albino locked the door of the training room and started heading for the locker room at the west side of the building, "Swain believes that the war will be miraculously won if he sends his right hand man to that cursed place, and he is putting children armed with sticks under his command to avoid drawing us veterans away from the capital in case that Demacia marches against us." The redheaded assassin shook her head mirthlessly to showcase what she thought of the Grand General's latest scheme.
Feeling that familiar prickle of anger worming its way into her stomach, Riven simply nodded once again. She silently opened the door to the changing room, found her locker and placed the heavy key to the training room on the middle shelf with a loud clanging noise. She locked the door again, moving with the stiff grace of a rumbling Zaunite automaton and turned around to leave, only to halt when she realized that the thoughtful redhead was blocking her way.
Katarina was still frowning at the floor, her arms crossed in front of her chest and a stray lock of her crimson hair hanging next to her pouting mouth.
"You know..." The redhead spoke slowly, deliberately, as if she was trying to solve a great mystery and couldn't find the answer to this riddle no matter how hard she tried, "I still can't understand why the High Command chose to keep you here instead of deploying you in Ionia along with the rest of your company. Just the news of you, Noxus' prized poster child, ingenious Ki prodigy and deadly blade master, fighting alongside our brothers and sisters in Ionia would boost the morale of our soldiers tremendously and scare the members of the Ionian resistance shitless."
"I agree," Riven muttered bitterly, her maroon-colored orbs suddenly turning angry and distant, "Keeping me away from the front lines was a mistake." The albino shook her head in disgust, cursing Emilia's name for shackling her in the mundane post of a drill sergeant instead of letting her prove her worth in the trenches and seize glory in the name of Noxus.
Qqqq
That night Riven had decided to practice her reading and writing. She sat at the rickety desk of her dilapidated apartment and clumsily copied letters from an old worn book that the parents of a specific noblewoman had gifted to their only daughter at least three decades ago. The pages of the book were somewhat crinkled and faded, but the letters on their center and the pretty drawing that accompanied them were still discernable despite the passage of time.
"Apple, A-P-P-L-E, apple" Riven repeated slowly as her pencil scratched the surface of the paper next to the old alphabet book. Her tongue was sticking out of her mouth in concentration, her hand casted long shadows on the desk in the weak lamplight that illuminated the room.
"Apple," Riven whispered intently, her gaze darting between her scratching pencil and the open book that she used as a reference with the E.L. initials penned on the upper right corner of said book, "App-"
There was an impatient knock on the front door, a sharp abrupt sound that made the pale swordswoman freeze, her fingers squeezing the pencil in her hand while it however above the wrinkled, smudged sheet.
Riven waited for a moment, listening for the footsteps of fleeing children or the shouting of a disoriented drunk. Because who else would be either stupid or brave enough to visit her at this ungodly hour? Even Katarina, Riven's best friend knew better than to knock on the albino's door in the middle of the night.
When no childish giggling nor inebriated shouting or further knocking reached Riven's ears in the span of a minute, the drill sergeant mused that the knocking sound must have been a trick that her overactive imagination had played on her. She wiped the sleep from her tired eyes, settled back down on her chair making herself comfortable. She wet her lips, consulted her book, she lowered her pencil and started drawing an inclined 'L' that seemed ready to fall on its squirmy back at any moment now.
Then two more knocks sounded from the direction of the front door and Riven set the pencil on the desk next to the smudged sheet of paper, before begrudgingly standing up from the chair.
"Who is it?" Riven said in a manner that did nothing to conceal the annoyance that she felt for her unwelcome visitor as she grabbed the iron doorknob and pulled the door open, eyes narrowed and her chin raised high in an intimidating sneer.
Emilia Leblanc merely stared back at her through half-lidded amber orbs, her bloodied lips twitching in something between a smile and a grimace of pain as scarlet liquid dribbled out from the corner of her mouth running down her fair chin. The cloaked mage stumbled forward right into the arms of the shocked albino.
"E-Emilia?" Riven asked in surprise, instinctively wrapping her arms around her former lover to stop Emilia from following her ornate staff that unceremoniously thudded on the floor by her feet. The swaying witch sent her a little smirk in response, although she was clearly unable to stand on her own. Droplets of blood falling from her gleaming lips to stain Riven's uniform.
"It's so nice to see you, dear. I hope that I find you in good health, yes?" Swain's spymaster managed to whisper warmly, before a shudder of pain abruptly tore the smile from LeBlanc's face, her breathing turning erratic and quick, "Could we perhaps get inside before we continue this conversation? I'd hate to trouble you, dear, but I suspect that I have been poisoned." Emilia attempted to smile through a hiss of pain, her eyelids drooping even lower, her body shuddering in the albino's arms.
Riven stared into the striking amber eyes of her ex and blinked slowly. She placed one of the witch's arms behind her shoulders and proceeded to carry Emilia inside, kicking the mage's shimmering staff to the bedroom with them on her way there.
"Be careful with that," LeBlanc mouthed breathlessly, wincing when Riven purposefully drew her foot back and kicked the staff to the other side of the room. Apparently, her former lover had yet to forgive her for confining her in Noxus where she was relatively safer than the Ionian trenches, Emilia noted with another strained wince.
Notes: And that concludes the story. I came up with this rough draft while thinking about Riven's timeline and more specifically wondering what would happen if her most defining feature, her trauma and the betrayal of Noxus that she suffered though the war never happened to allow Riven to mature as a person. In this story LB was intimate with Riven and used her influence as Swain's spymaster and advisor to keep her girlfriend stationed at the capital when the rest of her company departed for the First Lands. With most of her friends and squad mates fighting abroad, Riven felt isolated on her lonesome and never grew out of her Noxian ideals. She felt betrayed, cursing her lover for taking her chance to prove herself away from her and separating her from her close comrades that died in foreign soil. Lb's gamble to save her love drove Riven away. That was the prompt I came up with when pondering of how to best protect Riven from heartbreak. Results may vary.