"Hey, Ruby," Jaune called out.
She looked in his direction and smiled as he jogged across the fairground towards her.
"Jaune!" she waved excitedly at her friend and beckoned him over to her.
"The team and I are going to hook up with team ABRN tonight for a video game marathon in the commons. We're trying to rally more troops. Do you wanna join?"
"I'd love to!" she responded enthusiastically, but she quickly averted her gaze, blushing. "-I can't, though. I have plans to go into town with Yang tonight," she explained. "You're free to ask Blake and Weiss, though."
"Oh, okay," Jaune responded, and Ruby started walking again. He hurried to her side and walked with her. "Why are you heading to the city?" he asked.
"Oh, um, no reason," she answered, blushing. "It's just-just a thing we plan sometimes." She quickly reverted to her smile again. "Ooh! Funnel cakes!" she exclaimed, bolting off towards one of the booths. Jaune's confusion was plastered on his face, but he shrugged it off when he saw Coco and Velvet walking together and went to invite them to the game marathon.
Ruby sat at the booth with her funnel cake, recounting her conversation with Jaune in her head. She hated not being fully honest with him, but hardly anybody knew about her occasional visits to her mother's memorial to talk to her. She didn't want people to think she was weird for doing so and she certainly didn't want to make a big deal out of her losing her mom. She was already an outsider for being 15 years old at Beacon Academy, and she would do anything to be normal for a change. Her thoughts were interrupted when her sister sat down beside her.
"Afternoon, sis!" Yang greeted her warmly, looking hungrily at the funnel cake in front of Ruby and licking her lips. Upon reaching for the pastry her hand was slapped away. Dejectedly, she ordered one of her own.
"What's up, Yang?" she replied. Last time she had seen her big sister she was laying on her back in bed, as expected. Generally on days when they plan to go down to the memorial, she gets unusually quiet.
"Nothing much," she replied. "You ready to go see mom later?"
"Of course," she answered, looking to the sky. "It's nice to keep her involved in what's going on, ya know? I'm sure that I would be sending letters to her all the time about the happenings of this school. That is, if there was somewhere to send them to." She looked down at that statement, doing her best to recall moments of them together as a child.
"That's very mature of you, Ruby," Yang replied, putting one of her hands on Ruby's shoulder. Ruby smiled.
"What about you?" she asked. "You're advancing to the doubles round. Are you nervous at all?"
Yang laughed a little at the question in an attempt to remove the serious vibe that had come over the two. "Why would I be? Weiss and I are going to kick butt!" The two of them laughed together as Yang gloated about her developing synergy with Weiss and how they were going to dominate the tournament. Ruby was truly happy for her sister. Sure, she sometimes wished it was her who advanced in the tournament, but she understood that Yang and Weiss were more capable of going up in a dueling situation instead of fighting off hordes of Grimm that Ruby considered herself quite exceptional at. With that mindset, she smiled at everything her sister said and embraced her as they got up from their seats.
"Thanks for the chat, Yang," Ruby said, yawning. "I think I'm going to go take a nap before we leave tonight. You'll come wake me up when it's time?"
"You bet, sis," she replied, handing her credit card to the vendor. "Go take your nap. I'll take care of this. I'll see you then."
Ruby stood up and meandered in the direction of Beacon, eyes scanning over all the crowds of people at the fairgrounds and taking in the peace and overall beauty of how the tournament brought people together. She spotted Jaune talking to Sun and the redhead boy from their team, as well as the skater girl she remembered from team ABRN talking to Emerald and Mercury. 'I see that the video game marathon is growing. With all the new people there, I'm sure they wouldn't mind talking about their weapons but I probably couldn't deal with that many people for a whole night. I guess missing it wouldn't be so bad after all,' thought Ruby, doing her best to erase the thoughts of having to spend a night with several people she might not know.
As she got closer to the Academy, she noticed Weiss walking out towards the fairground, with her head held a little higher and a smile on her face.
"What's up, bestie?" Ruby said eagerly. To her surprise, when Weiss turned towards her, she was still smiling.
"You're a great leader, Ruby," she sighed. Ruby, startled by the remark, stopped in her tracks. Weiss was someone she considered a friend but never was the feeling mutual.
"Is everything okay, Weiss?" she asked. The white-haired girl paid no notice to the question and was very apparently lost in thought, and so Ruby shrugged off the initial shock of the comment and continued on her way back to the dorm. With the surprise factor being diminished, Ruby returned to a state of utmost euphoria at the idea of Weiss finally accepting her friendship and returning it. Upon entering her dorm room, she furiously scribbled away these thoughts in her journal. After writing a substantial amount of what most people would call overly enthusiastic sentiments, she returned the journal to its home under her pillow before letting fatigue overcome her.
Her dreams were outright horrible. She was stuck watching as beaten and bloodied faces of friends, colleagues and others flashed before her eyes. She saw Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, Ren, Weiss, Sun, Neptune. Then came the less-recognizable faces: ABRN, BRNZ, CFVY, the other two from Sun's team, NDGO, Emerald, Mercury, FNKI. Then, it got worse: Ozpin, Ironwood, Qrow, Yang. And then she saw Blake. She wasn't bleeding, no. Her face looked normal outside of her eyes glowing red with passion and anger and-
"Ruby, wake up," someone said, shaking her gently. Broken from her trance, Ruby opened her eyes to see Yang standing over her with her hand on Ruby's shoulder. "Are you okay, sis? You were tossing pretty bad there."
"I'm doing fine, Yang. Just a bad dream," Ruby replied, still a bit shaken up from the nightmare.
"Well come on," Yang said, gesturing for her to come with her as she headed towards the door. "It's time to go." Ruby feigned a smile, not sure what to make of the nightmare she had just experienced. Why was Blake not bloodied? Why was everyone else the opposite? Why did she not appear in the dream? Heavily disoriented by the confusion, she got up out of her bed and followed Yang out into the courtyard and to her motorcycle. Ruby straddled the seat just behind her sister, wrapping her arms around Yang's waist and resting her head on her shoulder in a way that made it only slightly less uncomfortable; this would give her plenty of time to get over the nightmare she had just woken up from.
By the time the two had arrived at the woods where Summer Rose was to be remembered forever, Ruby had not forgotten about her nightmare but the initial emotional trauma that it had caused had dimmed. As the two walked through the trees, Ruby smiled at the feel of grass giving way under her shoes. After a short while of walking in silence, they saw Summer's gravestone come into view. Yang stopped walking where the plains stopped and the forest began.
"Have fun talking to mom," she said, smiling. Ruby nodded and continued walking. She got to the headstone and knelt down in front of it. She recognized her family sigil carved into the stone above her mother's name.
"Hi, mom," she began, brushing a stray red hair out of her face. "Things at the tournament have been going great. My team progressed into the doubles tournament. Yang will be competing instead of me along with Weiss but you'd be super proud of them. I know I am." She continued talking about the current state of the tournament but trailed off when her ears picked up a rustling in the distance. Still a little on edge, Ruby turned and peered into the woods, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. She continued talking and trying to reminisce with her mother but she couldn't bring herself to feel the same warm fuzzy feelings she felt when she usually did this. The rustling became louder and she turned to see a masked figure charging at her. As he neared the redhead, she managed to decipher that the figure can't have been much older than Yang, as well as the two small antlers that emerged from his head. In his white mask that had been painted red and much resembled that of the White Fang, the faunus looked aggressive. Holding a knife, he swung at the redhead before dropping to the ground. Ruby looked down and saw her scythe, Crescent Rose, embedded in the guy's stomach. She cursed her reflexes as she realized that she reactively must have struck out at him out of fear. Nevertheless, she quickly felt the pangs of guilt eating at her.
She dropped her weapon, and subsequently the White Fang member, into the grass, backing away from them. She dropped to her knees and covered her mouth with her hands. The feeling was unbearable; Ruby had never needed to kill before. In fact, she found herself staring at the blood pooling beneath the masked man, unable to look again at what she had done. She went to look from the man on the ground and into the sky but stopped when she saw Yang rushing towards her from the forest. Hastily the blonde knelt by both Ruby and the fallen cult member.
"What happened here, Ruby?" she exclaimed, already pulling out the scythe blade from his chest.
"He-he," she stammered. "I-I had to..." she could not muster any more words. Still refusing to return her gaze to the mess she made, she turned towards the vast openness that lay beyond Summer's memorial and over the following cliff. She bowed her head, not entirely sure what to make of the situation or even what she was feeling at the moment. She let her shoulders droop in an almost lifeless manner.
"That's okay, Rubes. Here, let me help." She took the scythe and wiped it in the grass, cleaning it as well as she could. She had seen Ruby open and close it a million times but she still nicked her finger while collapsing it. Lifting the weapon with a grunt, she moved over to be by her younger sister and wrapped an arm around Ruby's shoulder, holding her tight.
"It's going to be okay, sis. Don't worry. Things will be fine." Yang repeated that along with other comforting phrases while Ruby sat shaking in emotions as pure as her now-lost innocence. This was playing out far too nicely; Yang was surprisingly calm regarding this affair and so Ruby started to pull away, uncomfortable with the situation. She needed to be reprimanded and reminded that what she did was bad and that she could get in serious trouble. After a period of time, and a suitable number of mood changes that Ruby experienced, the sun began to darken. Yang stood up and helped the redhead to her feet.
"Come on, Ruby. We need to head back to the academy. There you can lie down and we can forget all this, okay?" Ruby, forcing back tears, nodded and walked slowly at Yang's side to her motorcycle. On the way back to the academy she cried softly into Yang's shoulder. At a stop in the trip, Yang reached a hand back and pet Ruby gently on her head, letting her know that her older sister knew. Because of this, Ruby was reassured that she would be okay.
When the two arrived back at Beacon, Ruby immediately dove under her covers and buried her face in her pillow. Still trying to sort out the events of that evening, she was quite satisfied when Yang sat down by her and stroked her head and back gently over and over again. She wished she could just close her eyes only to have them open again with this entire escapade having been a dream. However, she knew that this wasn't a possibility and that no matter how hard she tried to live it down, she will always have secured a kill at the mere age of fifteen.
Emotions were tossed back and forth. Ruby couldn't hold onto any one of them for more than a few minutes at most, and she found herself in the middle of a mix of anger, sorrow, confusion, despair, and others. At one point in particular she tossed a monstrous tantrum out of pure anger for being forced into that situation in the first place. It was at this time that Yang, who had previously been gently stroking her back, used force to hold Ruby still. In the midst of it all, Ruby was grateful that Blake and Weiss took the opportunity to go to Jaune's game night.
"None of this is your fault, Ruby," her older sister said sternly. "None of this is your fault." She went on and on with that, repeating the same phrase every few moments. Eventually Ruby had even heard her older sister start to choke up as well, and that's when she realized she wasn't the only one affected by this. Calming down to the best of her ability, she sat up and embraced Yang tightly, refusing to let go. The both of them had witnessed something traumatic today, Ruby had realized, something that they would likely not forget for a long time. Despite all the crying she had done in the recent hours, Ruby still found herself choking back more and more tears as the emotional wear-and-tear of the situation continued on.
Although not feeling any better, the various mixed emotions that Ruby was feeling gave way to fatigue one-by-one. Releasing Yang from her grasp, the both of them retired to their respective beds and Ruby immediately pulled out her journal for the second time that day. The scribbling she did in the journal was much more disorganized than earlier as she still could not pinpoint the exact emotions she was feeling about it. Still she toiled on, refusing to let herself fall asleep without expressing everything that happened on that evening. She knew that she truly wanted to forget this ever happened, but at the same time she knew deep down that it wouldn't be fair to let this moment in life turn into regret later down the road. After taking up a multitude of pages, most of which was scribbled out thoughts, Ruby retired her journal once more, storing it away in its little safe place under her pillow. She looked over at Yang, who was fast asleep. Ruby would have hated to wake her up and disturb her older sister, but she knew that now more than ever, she needed Yang to be right with her. Stalking over to her sister's bed, Ruby nudged Yang's shoulder until she was greeted by the familiar purple eyes she had known all these years.
"Yang, I-," she paused, not sure exactly how to formulate her thoughts into words. "I don't feel comfortable sleeping alone tonight." Yang said nothing in response. Her gaze was somber but she did move to the side to create room for Ruby. Grateful but keeping a solemn attitude, she snuggled up next to her sister so that she might finally get a good night's rest. She closed her eyes to let herself succumb to the awaiting dreams that would come to her that night, and she even smiled as she felt the warmth of Yang's tender lips take the form of a gentle kiss on her forehead.
Dear Journal,
I'm not entirely sure how to say this. I- I killed today. I don't know how it happened nor do I know how I did what I did. It looked to be a member of the White Fang, and he charged at me. Afterwards everything went black and next thing I know, he was just… well… dead. You know me though. I hate using my actual scythe blade in combat. I almost always swing to stun. You know that right? You know I wouldn't kill someone in cold blood like that. I'm sure you do; you've always understood me better than most people here. I just hope mom wouldn't be mad at me. I know she was a huntress herself and likely has killed in her lifetime but the thought of her baby girl having to kill for no real reason can't have been that good, right? I guess for the first time, I hope someone finds this. I hope someone reads this entry because the tear-stained pages of this journal hold my testimony that I would never kill like this out of malice. It is with this that I bid you good night.
Ruby Rose