Summary: After the fall of Beacon, Yang and Ruby flee back to their home on Patch. But while she recovers from her crippling injuries, Yang begins experiencing the nightmares of the past…
The Shadow of the Sun
RWBY
Written from the perspective of Yang Xiao Long
oO oOo oOoOo oOo Oo
"I want you mommy," I would say when I was tucked into bed.
'Sleep well my dear summer child.'
That's what my mother would say before she kissed me goodnight.
Or should I say, my stepmother, Summer Rose. My real mother wasn't much of a stickler for domestic life. She left pretty soon after I was born and weaned on baby formula. Nobody's seen her for many years. I don't even think I'd call her 'mom' or 'mother' if I see her. She'd just be 'Raven' to me.
I don't even know what her voice sounds like. But I know what mom's voice sounds like.
"Want a cookie?" "Yang's been a good girl?" "Brush your teeth before bed." "Yang, could you clear the table please?" "Tai Yang! Could you please put the toilet seat down after you use it?" "Yang make sure you wash your hands before dinn - GET THAT FROG OUT OF MY KITCHEN!" "Where's your nose? Where did your nose go?" "Peek-a-boo!" "Who's a cutie? You are! Yes you are!" she'd say with a pinch of my cheeks.
But the phrase I'd remember the most… was the one she'd say to me with a soft smile.
"Who's my sweetest little summer child?"
"I am!"
My voice gasped in the unlit room. It was night, cold and dark. Pitch black like a Grimm. I could see nothing except the silvery strands of light from the window, illuminating a worried face.
A bolt of cringe shocked my body as I realized I replied to my imaginary mother out loud. Ugh. The thought of an adorable little me, getting so excited to see her smile as she patted my head and gave me hugs… Those days are long gone.
"Yang?"
A sweet voice not unlike hers called out to me.
"Ruby," I said in a raspy voice. I tried to lift myself, pressing a stump of an arm to support myself. Big mistake. I bit my lip from the pain. The injury was only just beginning to heal and I made the dumb move of putting pressure on it. "Ow, ow, ow."
Ruby rushed over. "Hey, easy there sis," she said softly. After easing me back into bed and tucking me in, she pulled up a chair. Ruby looked so cute in her pajamas, I thought happily.
"I want to devour you like a glass of cold milk," I joked.
Ruby looked horrified. "You'll die from all the sweetness, sis!"
We both laughed.
"You should go back to sleep."
"I'm good here," Ruby replied. "Besides, I kind of want to close to you anyways…" Her voice trailed off, thick with concern. Sometimes, little sisters just simply win.
"Why don't you join me? It's better than the chair," I said softly.
I'm not sure if it was her semblance-enhanced speed or what but in an instant she was under the covers and snuggling up to my sides.
"So warm! Hehehehe," Ruby giggled.
I patted her head gently with my one good arm before it went searching for her hand.
Her fingers intertwined with mine, giving me a warmth that lulled me to sleep.
My hands felt so weak, my fingertips so numb, that I could barely hold on. It was cold, even bundled beneath all these blankets and her sitting by my side. She was huddled in blankets as well. The night is dark and full of terrors. I didn't want to be alone. Everyone else had gone off for their own reasons. Ruby stayed for her own, even though she wouldn't tell me why.
"Why do you stick by me?" I wondered in a whisper.
"Because we're sisters," she'd assure me, again and again. Her goofy smile plastered over her cute face.
It's not such a bad sight to see, I thought burying my cheek deeper into my pillow. I close my eyes, hoping I do not see it again. "Are you still there?" My voice sounds afraid, like a little girl who misses her mother.
"I'm here, Yang." Ruby's answer was like a soothing lullaby.
"Thank goodness." It was selfish. She couldn't sleep until I did. I knew that. But couldn't I be selfish once in awhile?
Then, I began to dream my nightmare.
When I was little I adored my mother and she adored me. We were perfect for each other. I would rise in the morning and she'd tuck me in at night - a perpetual cycle of happiness. It was like a fairy tale where a knight slays the dragon and marries the princess. But once the fairy tale ends… once the magic fades… once that magic fades like my parent's love…
...It all c0M3s CrAshiNg dOWn.
At night the pillow wasn't enough to suppress the drunken screams and wild accusations. You slept with him! or You slept with her! and every curse-filled, slurred, yellow-stained teeth variation in between. He was a gentle soul once, his mother said, but the world got to him. And the bottle. And my mother… she wanted freedom. She wasn't the type to stick to the domesticated life… she was free spirited… loose like a leaf, my dad would say in disgust… loose with her legs…
I know he drove my mother away. I know her did. At least I think he did, more or less.
What matters is my mother left. She left me with him. That drunk. The same drunk that drove her away.
And he found another body to warm up before he was even cold.
Summer Rose...
She was a pleasant woman. She arrived soon after my first mom left. For a while, I thought moms were replaceable, like dolls. You could change a mom as long as you had another doll waiting in the toy chest.
But she was nice.
She did things Raven never did.
She cooked for us. She cleaned our cuts. She played with us. She talked to us. She taught us things… about caterpillars and herbs and all the things little girls want to learn about. Why are bugs so gross? Why are boys so icky? Where do babies come from?
"Oh you know, Yang," she would say. "Birds and bees," she said with a smile before handing me a cookie for my troubles. Everytime she'd ruffle my hair and crumbs would get all over my lap.
A good girl always cleans up after herself, she'd say with a wink.
Then I'd reach for a napkin.
Go and play with your sister, she'd tell me.
And I did.
I was pulling Ruby in the little red wagon to do what Summer did. I wanted to end our stories.
Wasn't that the most natural decision?
Two lost mothers. A father lost in the bottle. Wasn't it the right thing to do?
"You're stupid," my Uncle Qrow said to me as he dragged me and Ruby back to the house. "Stupid just like your mother…"
'She wasn't stupid' was what I wanted to say.
But how could I?
My eyes open awake, they see the ceiling.
I am alive, but I cannot move my limbs. My legs… my remaining arm… nothing listens. Nothing moves.
I could feel every pulse of blood push against the walls of my vein. I am laying there, like an etherized patient. Unable to interact with anything. I exist, only feeling the torments of living. Every heartbeat. Every buzzing sound of the wind rapping against the window. The spots in my sight. The horrible loneliness of my thoughts.
Alone and chained to my fate, and whatever else comes for me.
My sweet summer child.
There was a woman. Her skin was black as shadow. Her eyes were bloodshot red. She grinned from ear to ear with bloody lips and fanged teeth. Every movement was a twitch. Every step a creak. Click. Click. Click. Click. A gurgling noise like bubbling fat and blood dripping down her chin.
Shall this be what undoes me?
hUsH nOw my sweet summer child...
It approached.
"...shut up."
DO yOu hate mE dEAr sweet summer child? YOUr own mOtHer?
"... just shut up…"
How I sTole yOur father frOm yOu?
...shut up!"
How he forgOt mE, yOUr OwN mOTHeR?
"Shut up!"
How he KiLLEd her. hOw i KiLLed my-
"SHUT UP! Shut up shut up shut up shut up!"
She looms over me. Her black skin is pale in the moonlight. Maggots run through her open pores. Her pupils are small and tiny and dark. Rotten fingernails trace along my cheek. This is what she is, this is what she looks like after years six feet in the ground! She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't!
i aM y0u, my sweet summer child.
"YoU ARe NOT me!"
A vision floods my eyes.
Ruby is there, smiling in her pajamas still asleep.
I smile. She's still there. Ruby's still there. She looks like her mother. She looks exactly like her mother. Her disgusting voice is ringing in my ear. Yang! Yang! Yang! Her stupid mannerisms. Her stupid smell. Her stupid habits and tastes. That disgusting sister of mine… just shut up, just shut up! SHUT UP!
Fingers surround her thought as my thumb presses against her throat, crushing her airways.
Her eyes bolt open.
She looks at me. My reflection in the iris of her eyes. She chokes out a single word.
"Y-Yang?" she says in a single desperate gasp.
Blood pours into my grip. I am leaning over her. My body weight presses against her. She can't escape. Her soft fingers graze my wrist. Her fingers had the strength of ten tiny caterpillars.
She can't speak. She's silenced.
But the ringing of her voice still irritates me. An insufferable pain. With each ounce of pressure I force into my grip, the irritation lessens. My knuckles crack. My fingers lock. It was pure ecstasy to choke the life out of her.
It just felt so good.
Snap!
Her eyes roll into whiteness. Her head limps on her broken neck.
"Ruby?" I whimper. "Ruby? Wake up… wake up… hey, this isn't funny…"
Releasing my grip, her limp body slumps into my bed.
"RUBY?"
My voice shrieked through the empty room, leaving me and my sweaty self alone.
That's right.
It was just a dream. Just a nightmare…
Ruby left several days ago… she was going on a journey… somewhere...
She wasn't here. I didn't kill her…
…but that didn't mean I haven't tried before…
I was young and stupid. I read a newspaper clipping about Grimm sightings in a far reach part of an island and Signal hunters would clear it out in a week but until then all locals should steer clear of the area. I thought that my mother was the sort of person who'd be the first one to rush into danger.
She'd be the kind that would squash it in a day.
But then I thought, like all kids do, that maybe I could wear my mother's shoes and take them for a walk.
I laced her boots. I loaded Ruby onto a cart.
We were going on an adventure.
As I pulled Ruby down the bumpy, dirt road. A thought crossed my mind.
Would I really find her there? It was a stupid long shot. Doubt settled in.
They said my mother was dead.
Maybe… in my twisted childhood logic… if we found some Grimm… and let them do as they'd please…
Maybe me and Ruby could see her again?
I didn't go out that day looking for my mother.
I tried to drag Ruby with me to our deaths, because I just wanted to see her again.
I was just a stupid little girl who wanted her mommy to kiss her goodnight one more time...
I wanted to die… I wanted to die… just like… just like…
I wiped away the tears as a cold splash settled throughout the nerves. It was a message my body rejected. It was a reality my soul was not prepared for.
Summer's life ended the day the leaves turned orange.
She died in ambush by Grimm during a mission.
It was all a lie.
She was one of the greatest huntresses of her age. She could slaughter entire hordes of Grimm in a matter of seconds and flee as swift as a hare. Did anyone really believe that she could have died to a simple ambush? Did anyone honestly believe that muddied lie spewed by adults?
How could anyone be so stupid as to believe it? They had to be a dense idiot… they had to be a blind fool to buy that lie and eat it up with a mud-smeared grin and ask for seconds… they had to be… they had to be...
… they had to be me.
I held onto every single word. Summer Rose died a hero. She died protecting us… She died for us…
No, sweet summer child. No I didn't.
Summer did not die protecting us from Grimm. Everyone calls her a 'hero'. My drunken father, my equally drunken uncle, and all the phony adults who've ever dropped by for whatever. Her death didn't save us or humanity. It didn't bring us closer to a world of a quiet night. No. Lies. They were lies to comfort us kids. They thought the truth could be swept under the rug and the children would never find out. That's all adults do is lie and belittle and it's up to children to see the horrendous truth for what it is.
Summer Rose threw herself to the Grimm. She allowed her life to be taken.
She killed herself.
She didn't want to be alive. She didn't want to be in this world.
She didn't want to be alive in this world where my father still loved another.
Another mother… was taken from me.
"I can't stay here." The shadows on the walls began to creep closer around me. The lone candle flickering by my bedside, meekly as it was, still shone bright.
Is this it? Is this all my life amounts to? A little room in a far off island just waiting for my days to end?
The cold air gave my skin goosebumps, like an electric jolt to my rusty systems. It felt so alive… to be outside in the woody air smelling of snow and bark.
I looked up to the shattered moon.
"Ruby needs me," I told it.
In the dark, even a dying candle could shine like the sun.
I began running towards the coast to catch a late night boat to the continent, I began chuckling to myself at a silly thought. My father would be furious and worried sick once he found out I left. But then, after a few shots of whiskey he'd just laugh it off:
You're just like your mother.
No disagreements there… it's just that…
I wasn't sure which one.
The Shadow of the Sun Fin