Ruby shivered and clutched her cape around herself, trying to keep what little warmth she still had. The sun shined brightly down on her even from behind a cloud, and a cool spring breeze drifted its way lazily across her skin, but she didn't feel it. Every nerve in her body ached, and her muscles were starting to spasm out of her control. She was miserable and in pain, but she knew that the relief to her trouble was close. Just a second away, in her backpack. She couldn't do it here, though. Not with so many people watching.

Every second that she had to restrain herself was agony. Every fiber of her being wanted to tear her bag open and rip what she needed out of it, but she couldn't. She still had to get to her room. Weiss and Blake were out on the town, and Yang was staying late in one of their classes. She would be all alone in her room. Just what she needed. The sun came out from the cloud it had been hiding behind, and Ruby almost screamed in pain. The light stabbed through her eyes and tore at the ropes of grey matter behind them. Ruby had to clutch her hands together tightly to keep from trying to scratch at the thing that resided in her cranium. She realized that her feet had stopped moving, and redoubled her efforts to reach the dorms.

The building came into view, and she breathed an anxious sigh. She was almost there. Just a little further to go. She remembered the words of one of her teachers: "Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth slowly can help slow the heart rate, calming an individual in stressful times." She tried this briefly, but quickly found that her nose was blocked by layers upon layers of mucus, some of it solid and some of it fluid. She immediately switched to trying to breathe through her mouth, but a large amount of phlegm had found its way to the middle of her throat. She coughed and spluttered in an attempt to dislodge the substance. After a few seconds of desperate coughing, the wad of slime was expelled to the ground.

She bent over it, catching her breath, her eyes closed as she tried to catch her breath. Breath in, breath out. Breath in, breath out. Why was it so hard to remember? Her eyes opened, and her vision swam behind her eyes for a moment before the ground came back into focus. She peered confusedly at the gelatinous red glob for a moment, wondering what it was, before coming to the startling realization that it was blood.

Straightened up, kicking her shoe though the slime as she walked past hoping that no one had noticed. Her eyes were still in an extraordinary amount of pain from the sun, and she squinted in an attempt to avoid it. A cold sweat started to seep its way through her pores, only making her feel even colder.

Ruby started to walk faster to the doors. She was starting to feel that everyone was watching her. She was practically sprinting by the time she hit the door. Her shoulder contacted the metal door, and she felt the resounding vibrations travel through her entire body. The door swung open, and Ruby hurried inside, moving as fast as she could in what felt like cramped hallways. She sprinted up one flight of stairs, than another, before reaching the proper floor. She turned off the stairs and moved to the proper door. It took her a few agonizing seconds to fish her scroll out of her pocket, and when it was finally free it took a few more to hold her fingers steady enough to hit the proper sequence of numbers to access her data. Once the proper buttons had been pressed, she held the device shakily up to the doorknob.

The screen flashed green, and the lock clicked open. Ruby threw the door open and rushed inside, practically throwing her bag onto her bed. She took a seat next to it and started to root through its contents, looking for the sweet ambrosia that would end her pain and make her feel whole again.

She found the smooth surface of the inhaler she had purchased hours earlier, and her fingers tightened around the grey actuator. It was the only thing in the world that would stop the torment she was going through. She drew the inhaler out from the backpack. The plastic bag it was contained in glinted softly in the dim light making its way through the curtain.

She tore the bag open, not having the strength to stop herself. The plastic ripped easily under her now wildly twitching fingers. She could barely hold on to the inhaler. She brought it to her mouth and pushed the canister, breathing in deeply, feeling the rush of dust filing her lungs and spread through her body.

For a brief moment, as the dust flooded her system, she thought of what the others would think. Yang, Weiss, Blake, even her father. Her father…

He would be devastated. He knew that he had raised her better than this. She had been told that things like that were dangerous. Her cheeks flushed with shame and embarrassment. She would never be able to confess what she had done to him. Her mother had protected many people from the exact same thing.

And Yang? And Weiss? And Blake? She loved them, but she could never tell them either. If she did, they would lose all respect they had for her. What good was a junky, especially at being a hero? She was a failure. She had one goal in her life, and there was no way that she could succeed now. Her grades had been slipping, and her performance in battle had degraded to the point where she was more in the way of her teammates. But she couldn't just give up. She had to continue trying. If she didn't, than she had nothing left to live for. Nothing except for the dust, that is.

Those were the last thoughts that Ruby had before the dust reached her brain, and she was overcome with waves of ecstasy. The shame and the trepidation simply faded away, and a dulled smile came across her face. What was she so worried about? She had her sister, she had her friends, and she was happy. That was all that really mattered, right? Her eyes glazed over, and her body relaxed. The terrible pain that had wracked her body left her, and she felt good again. Her world was right again.

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