Future
Word Count: 667
"C'mon Rennnn move it! I've got something to show you before Pyrrha thinks it's a mess and cleans it up!"
Nora dragged her partner along by her vice grip on his wrist, his fingers quickly turning numb. While eternal gratitude filled him for at last leaving the confines of Beacon's infirmary, worry had a stronger hold. He was afraid she was guiding him to meet a miserable fate, and without his voice he could not reason with her or call for help. He'd slowly been learning sign language, but while Nora tried her hardest to learn, focus was not a quality she possessed.
They arrived at the door to their shared quarters, a place Ren had missed in the last several weeks that had lasted a lifetime. With gentle fingers, he tugged at the bandages encasing his neck as they suddenly began to itch his sweating skin.
The little Valkyrie flung the door open with great exuberance, and for every inch that it moved, a century passed. For a moment he was blinded by the sun, his eyes unused to anything but artificial light. A few blinks later and his surprise was unveiled.
The dorm was in complete, chaotic disarray; beds were moved. Sheets and blankets were strung up. Pillows created walls. Nora had made him a pillow fort; a smile twitched to life across his lips, a flood of childhood memories bursting forth.
She tugged him forward and then skipped ahead to pull back one of the sheets, gesturing to him to enter. He did, crawling on all fours until he arrived at the mass of pillows in the center and his partner collapsed beside him. He watched her, her with her orange hair glowing like embers in the sunlight, recounting all the days he'd missed, her hands waving around to tell her stories. And then she grew quiet, and then she became restless, tossing and turning, unable to find a comfortable spot no matter how she arranged her limbs. She let out a huff of air, blowing her hair out of her eyes. He recognized her behavior and knew she was thinking about something that troubled her, and so he waited patiently, simply watching.
Suddenly, she stopped, her back to him. Her body curled into a ball, and his brows furrowed in worry. Just as he reached out to touch her back, she rolled again until her face was inches away . A strange mix of emotions warped her normally bubbly expression. Her fingers ran lightly across his bandages, and he knows what troubled her. "It's all my fault-" his partner begins in a hoarse whisper, tears pooling in her cerulean eyes, but he touched two fingers to her lips and shook his head. Before she can protest, he pulled her close, burying her face into his chest and finally, finally, she let it all go. The animalistic noises she made were deafening but he did not care. He gently rubbed her back until she calmed down a little while later.
Nora lifted her head to meet his eyes, and her next words shock him. "Let's get married."
It took him a moment to gather his thoughts, and in that moment her face starts to fall. Quickly, his fingers move to sign "too young" but she doesn't understand. Disappointment consumed her expression, and she looked down. Ren sighed, predicting the future frustrations that his disability would inevitably cause. He raised her chin, forcing her to look at him again, and he signs, "One day."
The relieved and happy smile that spread across her lips show him that she understood the simple words. And for a few hours more, within the depths of the pillow fort, they lived in the hope that everything was going to be okay. Nothing would stop them.
Except for, perhaps, a certain blonde not watching where he was going as he entered the dorm who tripped and caused the entire fort to collapse along with him. Oh, Jaune...