So as the summary says, this is going to be my collection of all the one-shots, drabbles and pairings of every ship I want to write about but haven't got enough time for. The main ones will be Sunflowyr (RenxYang), Pyrruby (PyrrhaxRuby), Precious Gems (RubyxEmerald), Greek Fire (PyrrhaxYang) and Greek Gems (EmeraldxPyrrhaxRuby). The chapter titles will have the pairing initials in () and the pairing specified in bold at the beginning, as well as any necessary warnings.
Starting things off with Sunflowyr (RenxYang), and ANGST.
"So I think I figured it out" Ruby said, temporarily making Yang halt her consumption of the day's slightly overcooked food, to pay attention to her sister.
After a moment, when Ruby said nothing more, Yang responded "Alright Ruby, I'll bite" Yang said, making a chomping motion with her teeth for added effect. "What do you know?"
Ruby, with Yang's signature smirk on her face, said "Why you like Ren so much"
If it were anyone else, she would have denied it, but her sister knew her far too well. That, and Yang had caught the little brat reading her diary on more than one occasion, so she knew better than to deny anything. So instead she merely motioned for Ruby to continue.
"Well, Blake is your partner, and you two get along great. You'd probably be dating if Weiss hadn't snapped her up first."
Unable to let that little comment slide, Yang interrupted "There's also the matter of me not being attracted to women"
"Yang" Ruby said, her voice displaying all the deep wisdom of a 15 year old in the middle of puberty "A women's sexuality is like a moving target. I mean look at me. First I liked Sun, so I thought I was straight. Then I like Pyrrha, then Emerald and then"
"And now you're dating both, I know. Remind me to kill Sustrai later for corrupting you."
"If anyone does the corrupting, it's Pyrrha." Ruby whispered, then continued on "Regardless, you like Ren because he's like the male version of Blake. Quiet, aloof, mysterious."
"You're right, but wrong as well Rubes." Yang said, motioning for Ruby to be quiet when she wanted to protest. "Blake is quiet because she's always focused on something else. Her mind is always racing, always worried. Like how she was obsessed with the White Fang before the dance. Or how she gets lost in her books so often, to the point Weiss could parade naked in front of her and she wouldn't even twitch. She focuses on the other, tries to distract herself from reality." She paused for a moment, giving her younger sister time to process her words, enjoying the look of comprehension growing on her face. At a nod from Ruby, she continued.
"Ren, on the other hand, focuses on the now. He is always in the moment, always there mentally and physically. I mean sure he occasionally thinks about the future, but he never obsesses over it. He always returns to whatever is currently going on, and that gets his entire focus. Not just what is going on with him personally, but everything around him as well. The guy notices EVERYTHING. Sights, sounds, smells, you name it. He said he can feel when a storm is coming by the way the breeze feels on his face. "
"Ok, Yang you have officially lost me." Ruby replied, unable to grasp the metaphorical waters her sister was currently swimming through.
"Its…it's really hard to explain. I honestly don't know how he does it, he just does. And it took me a long time of being around him to figure it out. Sparring, studying, everything. I guess that's honestly how I noticed it. When we talk, he always pays attention. Never tries to rush, but never tries to slow down either. He just lets the conversation flow, like a river, going as fast or as slow as necessary. Never forced, never huh"
Without her noticing an all-too familiar pair of arms had wrapped around her shoulders as she felt a warm, ticking sensation on the back of her neck. Without turning she asked Ruby "He's been standing there the whole time, hasn't he?"
'Yep" Ruby responded her smile wide even as her eyes showed a hint of concern.
"Right, um Ren can you please stop scaring my sister?" But when nothing changed, if anything the arms tightened around her as the one kiss turned into two, then three and four. And while Yang was happy, if anything she was ecstatic, she figured this was not the best start to a relationship.
She turned her body around, hoping that it would force Ren to stop. Only to feel her world fall away at the look in Ren's eyes.
Without a word she stood up, grabbed Ren by the hand, and sprinted out of the cafeteria, leaving a confused but grinning Ruby behind, who was already breaking the good news to her girlfriends. She pulled him along gently but firmly, though he presented no resistance. He allowed himself to be dragged wherever the blonde was taking him.
Yang, knowing that her room was off-limits but the rest of team JNPR was either gone or occupied, ran into theirs and locked the door. Without a word she led Ren to the nearest bed and sat him down. Now alone, she looked at him again, and sure enough her eyes hadn't been wrong.
Ren was crying.
Slow, gentle tears steadily flowed down his face in an even interval, which was probably what gave Ruby the impression that something was wrong. But Yang could read Ren well enough to know that he was happy, deliriously happy, for reasons Yang didn't dare to let herself hope about.
She opened her mouth to talk, but Ren beat her to it by saying "You understand." And suddenly she got it. Two simple words, but coming from him it meant more, so much more. She smiled back, letting the joy and exhilaration she felt in her heart bleed out into the rest of her body. It wasn't her traditional smirk, or the simple happy smiles that were always present on Ruby's face. It was complex, much like the emotions racing through her head: hope and joy, with pieces of sadness and regret all mixed into one. Ren studied her for a second, and the look on his face almost made her semblance activate out of sheer shock.
Because Ren was looking at her, truly looking at her, like he had absolutely no idea who was sitting in front of him. Before he looked at her, and everyone else, like a puzzle. A massive collection of pieces that had to be assembled, in the hope that he could eventually determine the essence of what made Yang Yang or Nora Nora. But now he viewed her as an enigma, something that he wasn't even trying to understand.
Unfortunately, the joy of this moment was fated to turn to ashes, because Yang knew that she wasn't done speaking now that Ren was here. She swallowed the lump that had just formed in her throat and took a breath. What she had to say next had to be said, no matter the consequences. She had to know if she was right, and he had to know that she knew anything at all.
Casting aside her fear, she slowly said "There was one thing I didn't tell Ruby."
Ren continued to regard her curiously, the surprise evident on his face. Wondering what it was Yang hadn't said, he motioned for her to continue.
"You never get lost in the future, but sometimes you go back. To a place of darkness and pain, a hell that I don't want to imagine."
She paused and forced herself to watch. To see his bright eyes cloud over with pain and the curse of memories best forgotten. Watch as his body imperceptibly curled in on itself and fresh tears began to fall from his face. Feel her heart break at the despair that clung to him, stronger and tighter then Aura, then Semblance, then life itself.
Ren's always present self-control kept his shoulders from noticeably shaking, but Yang could see them faintly trembling. The rest of his body was rigid, a far cry from his usual relaxed state of being, and highlighting the amount of effort he was putting in to remain in control. It confirmed to Yang that he was on the edge of breaking down, and one push would send him tumbling over the edge.
Wordlessly, Yang backed up until her back was against the headboard, putting her in a sitting position at the front of the bed. Arms open, giving him a silent but obvious invitation, should he wish to take it. She didn't want to pressure Ren into anything, since from experience she knew that it would be useless. He would go along with almost anything he was dragged into normally, but this situation was far from normal.
He hesitated for a moment, but slowly approached, his movements reminding Yang of a frightened animal wary of a trap. She let him come as close as he possibly could, their bodies flush against each other, before she gently wrapped her arms around him. Not in the usual manner, in the standard hug, but in a modified grapple hold that Ren had taught her. He called it the worst grapple possible, since even a child could break out with ease.
Her actions seemed to put him at ease, and she felt some of the tension melt out of his body as he continued crying, staining her shoulder with her tears. His hands eventually came to lightly rest against her jacket, taking comfort in the cool, solid leather Yang wore almost every day. She felt Ren's hands tighten almost imperceptibly around her clothing, grabbing small bundles of material in tightly balled fists.
They sat there breathing in each other's presence, the scents and smells, the feel of the other's body. Yang tough and solid, ash and grease mixed with hints of rose from her perfume. Ren, flexible but unyielding in his own way, smelling of salt, soap and water. A reminder of the oceans that surrounded her home, something that Yang still dearly missed.
She deeply inhaled, knowing that what came next would be terrible for both of them, and began to speak. Softly, quietly, the words flowed from her mouth like a silent river.
"You try to hide it, and I doubt that anyone notices, sometimes maybe not even Nora. But when you see a family happy and whole, you tense up for a second, like there is something wrong with what's right in front of you. Especially when there's a younger and older brother."
Now she felt his hands tighten, fingers digging into the material hard enough to rip holes in the jacket. Yang dismissed the loss without a thought, her only concern for the man curled up in her embrace. Who was now trembling with the effort of holding himself together, afraid to give in to the pain that had tormented him for so long.
"I've seen the scar on your chest."
At those words Ren stopped trembling, stopped moving, stopped breathing. The only thing he did was look at Yang, his eyes now fully and completely centered on her, focused on her next words. His life, his sanity, depending on the next thing out of her mouth.
"And it's not your fault."
At that he did break, burying his face into her shoulder as he loudly sobbed. No longer holding back, the sounds of his cries filled the otherwise empty room. No longer were Yang's arms uselessly at his side, instead she enveloped him as best she could in the most comforting hug possible, her experience comforting Ruby telling her that this was exactly what Ren needed.
As he cried, Yang kept up a stream of endless soothing words, rubbing calming circles on his back, the blonde doing everything she could to ease his suffering however possible. But while her body ran on auto-pilot, her mind was racing. Because she had been right, about everything. Nora had unwittingly confirmed the last piece of the puzzle shortly after the tournament had started, when she had mentioned her and Ren were orphans. Because while that might have been true for Nora, Ren had had a family at some point, of that Yang had no doubt.
How else was the scar on his chest a perfect match for the lethal wounds she had seen carved into so many Grimm, a perfect trace of the blades she had faces in so many sparring matches? How else had someone used Stormflower to nearly kill their current wielder, unless they had received the same training?
Yang knew how rare and unique it was for any two fighting styles to be that similar, unless they received direct training as Ruby had gotten from Qrow. And considering how old the scars were, they had been inflicted years ago. Which meant Ren had been hurt by his family.
And considering how he reacted to siblings in particular, Yang knew without knowing how that it was his brother.
She was drawn out of her musings by the sound of Ren's voice, an unintelligible stream of words that Yang struggled to understand at first. But eventually she realized the broken boy in her arms was repeating "I'm sorry" over and over, begging for a forgiveness that endlessly eluded him. An absolution that even Yang could not grant, because the only one that could forgive him was himself, or a person that was probably long since deceased.
She held him tighter, activating a small amount of her aura, hoping that the warmth would bleed out of her and leech into him. Hoping that it would communicate her feelings; how much she cared for him, and that she understood the darkness in his soul, for hers was just as tainted. And even if she didn't, she would spend a lifetime trying.
Eventually the flow of his tears began to lessen, then halt entirely, as his grip on Yang's jacket lessened. Yang felt Ren's body sag onto her, every muscle going slack as he just collapsed. His exhaustion went beyond the norm, sinking past his flesh and bones, as if his soul itself was tired. Tired of the weight of life itself, tired of all the darkness and pain he had held in for far too long.
Without a word Yang slid them both off the bed, cradling Ren in her arms as she searched for his bed. Ren pointed one trembling arm towards his bed, and without preamble Yang flipped the covers up before depositing him onto the mattress. She moved to leave, but Ren stopped her with one fragile, weakened hand on her arm. His eyes held a wordless plea that Yang had seen far too many times in her sister's eyes.
She shook her head softly, then whispered "I'll be right back" before she went into the bathroom to drink and use the facilities as quickly as possible. Her bodily needs taken care of, she moved back to Ren's bedside, lowering herself onto the too-small bed and once again wrapping Ren in her arms.
She felt him slowly return the gesture, still too exhausted by his emotional ordeal to manage much more than a loose grip. But he cuddled against her as close as he could, seeking solace and comfort in the warmth that was radiating off her in waves. Yang gently hummed a tune from her childhood, a wordless melody that Summer had hummed for her and Ruby.
Based on his slowing breathing, Ren was quickly drifting off to sleep, his body crying out for the respite and safety that could be found in the realms of unconsciousness. But he managed to fight it off long enough to ask one simple question: "Why?"
Yang, knowing how much of an impact her answer would have, did as Ren would have done and eliminated all unnecessary thoughts, all distractions. She immersed herself fully in the moment, and spoke aloud the truth that she already knew in her heart.
"I love you"
And as sleep finally took him, she heard a faint whisper of "I love you too"
I meant for this to be happy and fluffy, and look what happened. But there is NEVER enough sunflowyr in the world.
So the chapters will be mostly unrelated. If anything IS connected, it will be made explicitly clear. Updates depend on mood, avaliable time and the giant ball of madness, born from logic, that I have in place of a brain
Feedback is always appreciated, good, bad or anything in between. Hope you guys enjoyed!