A/N: A light take on what occurs post-Signal and up to a little bit of canon. Part one of five.
No proof-reading we die like men.
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POST-SIGNAL ACADEMY GRADUATION TO YEAR ONE OF BEACON ACADEMY (1 YEAR BEFORE RWBY CANON)
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The last two months of school flew by to Lumi's eyes. Branwen remained a little distant, but by graduation they were pretty much back to normal and he gave her a set of hairclips with little spiderweb charms on them.
"Your hair's always in your eyes," he said and shrugged without looking at her. "Figured this'll help."
She only just refrained from jumping on him and giving him the strongest hug she could muster, and settled instead on gesturing for him to come closer like she was about to tell him a secret. When he bent low to listen in, she planted a quick kiss on his cheek then slipped far, far away through the shadows as she laughed. His first text of the summer were the words "never do that again for as long as u live." She responded with a picture of herself with the new clips in her hair and a thumbs up emoji.
It didn't take her long to find out that he was somewhat flakey when it came to responding to texts, and a quick investigation (asking Ruby and Yang) revealed that he actually did a lot of missions over the summer so she tried not to hold it against him.
It wasn't like she didn't have anything to do- to help take some of the financial burden off her dad, she'd applied to Beacon's summer work-study program and as part of her application she convinced Marine, a seamstress she sometimes ran errands for, to take her on for the term. Most of her wages went towards school, but she got to keep any tips she earned and she could work on her own projects as long as it didn't distract her too much.
She ended up pretty busy all things considered, but she made time to hang out with her siblings and Calypso, who was back in Vale for the summer.
She filled the taller girl in on things she hadn't bothered to send over text/video call and in turn was regaled with tales from Cally's romance filled school year in Vacuo. They stayed up late laughing and whisper-screaming at each other and groggily stumbled into the kitchen the next morning with freshly dyed hair. Calypso had done the tips of her white hair in a vibrant hot pink while Lumi had opted dye the crown of her hair black. Her dad side-eyed the pair of them and muttered something to the effect of "so loud… where do they keep all that energy?" and "what is lit?" and "how did they get hair dye?"
Lumi sent a picture of her new hairstyle, followed by a picture of the birds that liked to nest outside her house, to Branwen.
Lumi: do u think they'll let me into their birb gang?
Branwen: do chickadees have gangs
Curious, she searched Ping for the answer then sent it to him.
L: owls have parliaments but chickadees have banditry- sooo basically a gang
B: noted
B: free thursday?
She leaned back in her desk chair and hummed. Her Huntress outfit wasn't ready yet, but it was still early in the season. She texted back an affirmative and hammered out the details with him.
The hot summer trudged on. She sent him pictures of Kuro; he asked her worrisome questions about first-aid; she reminded him that she wasn't a doctor; he showed up with all of his limbs intact and told her not to worry the few times they met up- it was surprisingly easy to be his friend even if the two times they went for ice cream hers fell to the ground after a bite or three (she made him buy her another).
Granted, his advice when it came to choosing a Huntress outfit was… less than helpful, but despite that she ended up choosing something she was happy with just as the 39th Vytal Festival rolled around. She could have watched the matches like a normal person, but instead she bet Branwen half a melted chocolate bar that the first team to be eliminated would be team PEPR- which he played along with until they were betting random things like buttons, a shiny coin, two home-cooked meals, a torn piece of binder paper, a bottle of kiwi-flavored vodka etc.
It was all great fun- up to the point where he invited her out to grab coffee during the last semi-finals match and her favorite team was mercilessly destroyed before her very eyes. His laughter at her shocked face was drowned out by the sound of equal parts booing and cheers from the people around them, but she remembered the betrayal clearly and kept it in mind when she baked him a plate of cookies- with ground ghost pepper flakes in them.
Ruby later texted her, screaming about how cruel, heartless, and downright evil it was to do that- to the cookies. The cookies hadn't done anything after all; why would she hurt them like that?
Lumi laughed so hard she cried and even Branwen's various threats couldn't bring her mood down. She let a week pass before she texted him again and sent him pictures of herself being cute with Kuro to try to appeal to his "I should not murder my cute ex-student because she's cute and I would be sad to lose her" sense. Well, she hoped she was appealing to that sense and not his "she's mocking me so now I'm going to drop her off a cliff" sense.
When she didn't end up dropped off a cliff, she sent him a travel sized bottle of honey whiskey and stuck a drawing of a scarecrow with a cape on it just to make sure his temper stayed non-murdery. He responded with a thumbs up emoji and a request for her to "run into" Yang and Ruby at the mall on Saturday because there was no way he was taking them swimsuit shopping by himself while Taiyang was at a teachers' conference for the weekend.
She prodded him for more information because "I can't take them shopping alone" wasn't even an excuse and he explained that it was fine when they were younger- but his adorable baby nieces were turning into women and if one more uppity busybody sniffed condescendingly at him he was going to burn the whole store down. Also, no one wanted to go shopping with their dad- much less their uncle.
She took pity on him- how could she not?- and spent two hours trying on cute bathing suits with the two younger girls. They parted ways and made plans to go swimming before the summer let up, which they did and it was great fun aside from the sunburn Lumi now sported on her cheeks and shoulders.
School snuck up on them, somehow, despite it being on every calendar she owned and programmed into her phone. Lumi did end up getting thrown off a cliff, which she yelled at Branwen for not warning her about even though she was fine. He sent a page full of laughing emojis and nothing else in response.
Prick- she was going to put chili powder in his cookies again.
She ended up on Team HRLD (Herald) with a doormat leader, a too-flirty pretty boy and a girl best described as a "mild fireworks enthusiast" -if you used "would likely face jail-time but wouldn't make it to prison" to mean "mild."
It wasn't all bad though, because Calypso ended up going to Beacon instead of Shade and at least she didn't have to deal with filing weapon evaluation forms anymore (here, Branwen cursed her then immediately tried to cajole her into coming back to Signal to help him out which, ha ha ha- no). She'd served her time and it didn't matter how often he tried to bribe her with Stirbucks, she wasn't going back.
Fortunately enough, her team had settled into something that resembled an actual team and not a flaming trash can sometime during their second semester because they took as many missions as they could fit into their schedule- which had the effect of lowering the amount of infractions they got and allowed them to grow closer as a result. After all, it was hard to be annoyed with Diane for setting off the fire alarms three times a week because she was working on dust based cherry bombs when she saved Lumi's neck by chucking those same bombs down a King Taijitu's throat.
She and Branwen struck up casual conversations from time to time, but the amount of texts had dwindled due to their mutual lack of free time. At one point, he admitted (in his own way) that he missed having her around so she made sure to text him at least once a week and send him bizarre videos she found online to brighten his day. Well, she intended them to brighten his day but nine times out of ten he sent her a series of question marks instead of anything that would signify that he laughed, but she tried.
For the new year she sent him a coat with a handwritten note that said he should have more than one jacket to hide the fact that he only had one shirt. He sent her a picture of his middle finger taped to the front of a gift card to Stirbucks with a note that said she should get better taste in coffee.
She decided not to put chili powder in his next meal, but she would get back at him- eventually.
A/N: Hope you lovely readers enjoyed. I found this old thing and decided to post it for funsies while I work on the (proper) sequel to Cobwebs and Crows. Drop a review if you enjoyed- or even if you didn't.