Each and every one of them were dead.
Weiss remembered Ruby catching her shoulders as her knees gave out, as the letter bearing the horrifying words dropped from her fingertips. Ruby tells her something and Weiss has lost her voice, as it crowds in her throat and sticks like poison honey with everything she wants to say and can't.
Every crew member had died in the train's explosion, leaving behind families, grieving loved ones, the lives they'd sworn to her, to Princess Weiss Schnee.
She can't take much more of this.
Ruby's voice is right behind her, far away, and when Weiss does not respond, she is forced around to face her.
She can't hide it from her. She can't pretend around her.
She can't look at her.
"Weiss-" Ruby is shaking her shoulders, and even without raising her chin she can see so clearly in her mind the exact, determined line of her mouth, the unwavering passion in her eyes. "-Weiss, don't. Don't shoulder everything."
"I-" Her voice breaks open and the guilt slithers down her throat and chokes her. She looks at Ruby, finally, from behind the blur filling her eyes and spilling hot down her cheeks. "No-" There's no stopping the tears now, "-I am responsible." Weiss insists firmly. "Al...ways-" The world swims before her, and Ruby is silent. "-Everything I do-there's a consequence...! Everything...everyone, close to me-" She pulls away from Ruby, shaking her head, "-is at risk, always-" A sob breaks through her lips, and Ruby pulls her close, holds her together just before she falls apart. Weiss is unyielding to the embrace, suffocating her cries into her hands, shoving the world into herself.
She couldn't protect anyone.
At some point, Ruby helps her sit down on the bed beside her. A hand is at her cheek, coaxing her to look up into eyes that are ripe with intent, and Weiss moves to free herself. "N-No, Ruby-" Their lips very nearly meet, and Ruby's arms feel good, too good, around her when they keep her close. "-I can't justify...this." She rambles, "When my people are dying...when I will lose..." She looks at Ruby desperately, "...everything-" She doesn't want to imagine it anymore, because there's no way she can grasp the pain, know where it will stop once it shatters the fragile reality she knows, that she knows is a glorified falsehood, "-Who am I to take comfort in you, when someday, even-even you, will-"
"I'm not going anywhere." Weiss bites her lip and makes to stand up, but Ruby catches her waist and she's there again and steady fingers are trailing up from her navel as she's lain down on her bed. "And neither are you."
"R-Ruby-" Weiss' voice bends with urgency as she sees red, sees Ruby over her, feels lips touch her, again and again, her neck, her shoulders, the side of her jaw, making florid colors bloom across her skin as practiced hands trace her curves. Warmth spreads from deep in her stomach as she arches into her, and distressed, nervous fingers clutch at Ruby's hair, pull her closer, encourage her in spite of herself.
Ruby had a bad habit of being completely irresistible.
"I-I can't-" Weiss hissed, her hands acting counterpoint to her words as they clung to her, frantic, seeking. "-Ruby-"
Ruby catches her wrists, presses them into the mattress at either side of her head.
"You told me something once." Before she speaks, Weiss is sure she knows what she will say. "'Everyone is entitled to their own sorrow, for a heart has no metrics or form of measure. All of it is irreplaceable.' I believe in those words, Weiss." Her breath bathes her cheek as she draws closer. "No matter how much you would like for your words to have no meaning, to say something and have nothing change because of it-" Weiss meets her eyes when she takes pause, and the intensity with which Ruby stares into her takes her breath away, "-my feelings for you make that impossible." Ruby breaks eye contact, and Weiss' breath hitches tight in her chest as she feels her gaze settling on her lips, feels what is about to happen between them.
"R-Ruby-" Weiss murmurs feebly, but she's been holding her breath and the name is a dream upon her lips.
"If you want to speak without consequence-" Ruby's fingers slip between hers, and their hands meet perfectly, perhaps permanently, "-then you can say anything, and-" her gaze softens, as if entranced, "-you can forsake this, but-" Her lips are so close that they graze Weiss' when she speaks, "-just for tonight, your words will mean nothing to me."
"Ruby-" Weiss' voice trembles, pleading, broken, and the part in her lips as she speaks her name is full with Ruby's tongue, plumbing deeply and circling her own-a sound catches in her throat, and when Ruby moans back, Weiss feels its vibration resonating everywhere inside her. It is far from the chaste, even sisterly kisses they'd traded in times past. Something has changed, will change, is changing between them, and it will be absolute and decisive, something that can never be undone.
Fingernails bite into Weiss' knuckles, and the princess opens her eyes with a delirious, throaty moan that is lost to yearning, warm lips. Ruby's eyes drift open, as if just waking from a deep, enchanted sleep, and there is a brief space between their lips now, emphasizing their closeness even further. Weiss sees her own thought reflected in Ruby's eyes: that she wanted to watch her.
That they wanted to watch each other.
To see, to admire the other as they touch and kiss and feel-
The space disappears between them once more, and the sight of Ruby upon her with such pure, unfiltered focus and desire makes her heart thump painfully hard, muffled under the swell of Ruby's breasts. She knows she couldn't stop her even if she wanted to.
"I can't take any more of this..." Ruby sighs against the corner of her mouth, and everything becomes shades clearer in an instant-
Ruby had done better to hide her suffering, and had broken under the pressure immediately after she had.
Because she had.
Weiss presses into the kiss fervently; their tongues meet in soft, slow strokes in their endeavors to learn the contours of the other's mouth, to commit to memory the taste of yielding, wet lips and the way they fit together.
She had never wanted to put Ruby in that position.
A place where she felt obliged to keep her silence around even her, so true and honest was her desire to spare her whatever burden her feelings might bring.
From the way Ruby is kissing her, she's sure she's been kept waiting for far too long.
And from the way Weiss kisses back, she's not sure she hasn't been waiting for this on some level herself.
Ruby's hands leave hers-trusting her-cupping her face and deepening the kiss. Weiss finds the curves of her waist, following them around to the ribbons of her corset, pulling them loose with cautious, dextrous fingers. Immediately, Ruby's hands assist her, and the blur of hasty, desperate movement that follows is the two of them working off every layer that would serve as a barrier between them, from themselves, from the other, and it is simply their flesh together, as Ruby embraces her with her entire body, wrapping around her in a tangle of limbs, Weiss' fingers contorting through her dark, soft hair, keeping her close-
She feels so naked, on a far deeper level than simply physical, and Weiss only now realizes how badly she'd wanted to touch her like this, be touched like this.
The dawning of this knowledge frightens her, terribly, suddenly: she knows how fleeting these moments will be, how she will yearn for them when they are over, when she must return to being Princess Weiss Schnee-she clings to Ruby hard enough to make herself ache, to squeeze a broken sob from her chest, nails dragging raw trails down her shoulders-she thinks of how empty, how cold her arms will be without her to fill them-
With Ruby, she can just be-
"Weiss..."
-this, and-
"...Weiss, Weiss-"
-she can be a whisper, a shadow upon Ruby's lips, she can exist for her.
The way she says her name between the kisses trailing all the way down her body shoots straight down through her stomach and makes her knees tremble. Ruby's arms are around her the whole way down, maintaining as much contact as possible, worshiping her so thoroughly she could die. Her hips roll as Ruby's lips drift below her navel, parting again to moan her name against her womb.
Her voice is so pretty like that.
She wants to surrender to her, to that breathless voice, sweet and soft and lustful and loving and coaxing-Weiss feels the humidity of her breath at her most intimate place and trembles as her mind fogs over, dizzy with want.
Ruby's tongue is slow and hot, and Weiss is anything but prepared for such a euphoric sensation: she whimpers her name and reaches blindly out to her, fingers twisting through strands of silky dark auburn desperately. She reciprocates in full, moaning sweetly into her and drawing her tongue up along her tender folds, taking her time with her, kissing, sucking. Every sleight of tongue sends shockwaves up Weiss' body, back arching, hips swaying helplessly under her efforts.
Ruby murmurs something against her, Weiss feels the shape of her smile before completely melting in her mouth, tight and slick around the eager, irresistible movements of her tongue as she stirs her up, mixes her around-
She calls out Ruby's name, frantic, all but the most base of instincts having left her, and there is just Ruby, Ruby who owns her in heart, mind, body, whom her coasting, delirious moans belong to, whose lips are sweet and sticky when she climbs back atop her fully and shares her kisses once more, hushing her startled, uneven breaths.
They hold each other close: it is warm in a different way, slow, relaxed. It is kisses where they can reach without moving, fingers in hair, touches wherever they can. They know they have a little more time. Weiss stays huddled close to her, feels her pull the sheet over them and Ruby does not let go of her, even in sleep, and from that night on, things are different.
One night at a time, Ruby helps Weiss disappear.