"Yang, tell me a story."
The last time Ruby Rose had said that was on the night before shipping out to Signal Academy for her first taste of combat training. It had stormed then, and try as she might to hide it the thirteen-year-old still jumped at every flash of lightning. A mighty crash of thunder would follow each one, and she'd burrow a little deeper under her favorite red-and-black skull blanket. The stuffed Beowolf in her quivering arms had helped chase away her fear of the creatures of Grimm long ago, but no toymaker in the kingdom of Vale made little plush thunderclouds.
Yang Xiao Long had smiled then, ruffling her little sister's long black hair – Ruby wouldn't cut it short until the following winter, when she'd decide it would improve her aim in battle. "Aren't you getting a little old for that?" she'd said. Yang always said that – had said it, in fact, every time Ruby asked for a story since her tenth birthday. Ruby had declared herself all grown up then, too old for the usual stories of heroes and monsters Yang usually put her to bed with.
The worst storm in thirty years had roared through town that very night, knocking out the Dust stations and plunging half the city into darkness. Little Ruby had changed her tune on stories in a flash of the lightning outside, but her ten-year-old self's hubris would come back to haunt her every time Yang asked if she really wanted one. Ruby always would, especially on stormy nights.
On the airship back to Beacon from the City of Vale, fifteen-year-old Ruby was draped across a leather couch in a corner of the central lounge, watching the storm that had rolled in not long after the battle on the docks. She squeezed Crescent Rose to her chest, its folded-up frame red as the cape she was using as a blanket, and wondered when she'd stopped letting the thunder scare her. Probably not long after arriving at Signal, she decided. You couldn't go to a combat school without hearing explosions throughout the day, especially not one for young teenagers.
Even so…
"Yang, tell me a story." Ruby's voice broke a long silence that had lasted since they took off from Vale. Until Team RWBY saw the overstuffed leather seats in the ship's lounge, none of them had realized just how tired they were. As eyewitnesses to the failed port heist, they'd been subjected to a long round of questioning by the police – Blake especially, who was the only one who'd fought in it and stuck around afterwards. Sun Wukong was still on the run from Vale's finest, and Penny…was Penny. None of the four girls were sure what to make of her.
Yang yawned, stretched and shifted in her seat. "Aren't you getting…a little old for that?" she slurred, fighting exhaustion and rapidly losing. She focused on Weiss to keep awake. Maybe the heiress's dress would be bright white enough to shock the fatigue out of her eyes. Not that it had worked for Blake, who was curled up in her own chair and snoring quietly. Purring, almost – her being a Faunus definitely explained the sounds she made in her sleep.
"Yang." A little louder, a little more insistent. Not shrill, but getting there. Weiss stirred slightly in her sleep.
"I'm whooped. It's gonna suck."
"I don't care."
"It's been a while."
"I don't care."
"Get some sleep."
"Nope."
"Mhmm." Yang grunted as affirmatively as she could manage. Ruby closed her eyes, waiting as she'd waited more than two years ago – before Team RWBY, before Beacon, before Signal. Yang glanced around for inspiration. Storm, she thought. Going home, Ruby, Weiss, Blake, red, white…well, here goes nothing.
"Once upon a time, there were two Huntresses – one white like snow, one red like fire." Ruby opened her eyes a crack, watching Weiss sleep. She envied her partner. Weiss could be out like a light in minutes. Not like Ruby. She wondered how her bed stayed up, the way she tossed and turned some nights – lashed to the ceiling with hastily knotted ropes. She'd have to invest in something a little more permanent.
Yang's voice brought her back to the present. Ruby smiled, cuddling her scythe a little closer. Despite what Yang said, she could always count on her big sister for a story.
"They stood on the front lines of the war with the Grimm, and they were happy to stand there. Every Ursa slain, every Nevermore grounded, every Death Stalker squished – each victory brought hope for mankind's future. They loved nothing more than the thrill of a battle, because it meant survival for everyone they cherished. And as they fought together, they found that there was something they loved more, after all…"
Ruby was drifting off, the lethargy in Yang's words becoming infectious.
"Each other."
As Yang told her story, the great airship drew farther and farther away from the lights of Vale, in the opposite direction of a red-and-gold motorcycle speeding through the Agricultural District and out of the city. The slender figure astride the motorcycle gunned the engine as she left the buildings behind, a flaming scar tearing through the sleeping body of the forest. Cold spring rain pelted down around the lone traveler, a cloud of steam rising in her wake as the water boiled away inches from her body.
"The darkness sent terrible creatures to extinguish these two blazing lights, bigger and more fearsome each time. Friends and family died around them, and sometimes it was a struggle to face their own losses, let alone the Grimm. But the red Huntress knew that with the love of her life at her side, calming her burning passion and anger with cold, calculating caution and discretion, there was nothing she could not face."
The motorcycle screamed through the trees beyond Vale as the woman pressed on. Her Aura kept her warm, radiating from her body and stopping the rain from soaking her pale skin, her charcoal-black hair, and the crimson fabric of her dress, which would otherwise be wholly inappropriate for the weather. Her eyes glowed like her headlights, yellow-orange pinpricks against the forest's evening gloom.
"In the same way, the white Huntress saw how the world suffered at the hands of the Grimm, and often despaired of ever banishing the darkness. Yet she persevered, for she knew her reason for being fought alongside her each day, breathing life into a weary heart with her fiery spirit."
With a slight nudge of her hands the woman brought her motorcycle off the road and onto a dirt path, slowing and coming to a stop. She paused, turning back to watch for any followers. When she was satisfied, she held out her hand before her. A tongue of fire flared up in her open palm, lighting her way as she dismounted. The ground hardened as she baked it dry with her Aura, providing a stable surface for her glass high heels. She walked up a gradual hill and through the close-knit trees, a jeweled anklet clinking softly around her right ankle.
"So they fought on, striking down evil wherever it threatened their way of life. And when one day the darkness claimed its prize, they died in each other's arms. For although all lights must one day flicker and fade, love endures even in death."
The woman in the dress broke out of the woods, emerging onto a steep cliff thrust up from the trees as if ripped from the earth by the hands of giants. She approached a small gray stone, slick with rain and carved into a block with a simple picture of a rose, its upper petals rising and curling like the peaks of a bonfire. Summer Rose, it read. Below that: Thus Kindly I Scatter.
"Some say their spirits live on in every Huntsman and Huntress even to this day – reminding us all that while our duty is to fight for human and Faunus, for Remnant itself, our strength comes from the knowledge that someone somewhere is fighting for us as well."
Cinder Fall shed bitter tears as she fell to her knees and embraced the grave, tiny wisps of steam rising from her cheeks and vanishing with her sobs into the storm.