Nightmare
8/17/18
Ruby wakes up to a pounding sound. Her eyes instantly search the darkness for a threat—but another sound, one undertoning the pounding of her heart, makes her release her clenched fist. Weiss. Her breathing is steady, soft and even. She is lying on her back, her expression calm and her pink lips parted just slightly. The moonlight makes her skin shimmer like a slumbering princess in a fairy tale. Ruby smiles, thanking the angels that had created her.
She settles down, burrowing against the soft curve between Weiss' arm and breast. Ruby sighs, curling against the warmth. She traces Weiss hand lying against her stomach. Her fingers are slender and delicate, and yet she knows how unyielding they are even under the fiercest of blows. And yet her touch is as light as silk when she caresses her skin.
Ruby lets her eyes close—and instantly sees her mother's face, vivid and etched into her mind. Her features are contorted in pain, her eyes wide in fear. Ruby has seen that expression too many times, right before someone falls. She can't see what her mother is facing, but she feels it, feels its heavy presence right before it cuts her mother down.
Was it painful? Did she scream, or did she bear it stoically? Did she think of her, of her family waiting for her to return?
"...Ruby?"
She tenses.
"Yeah?"
"Your breathing's loud."
Ruby claps a hand over her mouth. "Sorry!"
A light pressure traces along her hairline.
"It's okay," the heiress exhaled, then shifts until she looking down at the girl. Her blue eyes shimmer like silver in the moonlight. "Another nightmare?"
She nods. Weiss exhales again. She finds her hand in the dark, and twines her fingers between hers, squeezing. "C'mere." Ruby scoots up until her head rests in the curve of Weiss neck. She breaths in, and could smell her mint soap—not as calculated as the spearmint and bergamot perfume that she would wear to assure finesse and confidence during business meetings, or the sharp peppermint and lemon for assertiveness when sealing deals, but a light and clean scent, soothed with lavender—and felt instantly at home.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Ruby shakes her head, her cheeks brushing her lover's soft skin like a pillow. "Nmm-mmm. In the morning."
"Alright." And no more needs to be said. They know that they can talk about it in the morning: Weiss would brew a cup of tea and make sure that the nightmare isn't a concern needing to be addressed, and Ruby would reassure her that she had taken care of those feelings a long time ago, and Weiss would understand, because they both know too well how one could still be haunted by memories even if they had been buried long ago.
So instead, Weiss rests her head against hers, and hums under her breath. The song isn't one Ruby had grown up with, having been raised with Yang's more bawdish substitutes for lullabies. But it sounds like she had always known it as she feels the melody thrumm within Weiss' chest like a purr, only for it to rise and fall like a winter breeze on a quiet, snowy night.
The melody lulls her thoughts, and softens the image of her mother until her wide eyes slowly melt away like a snowflake on her tongue, until the only impression she is left with is the lulling melody and Weiss' warm embrace, where she could stay for hundreds of years and never let go.