Yang silently watches Nora tinker with Magnhild in Beacon's armory for a few minutes. Even while doing something as tedious and repetitive as refining the transformation configurations of her weapon, Nora is bubbly with excitement. Yang doesn't want to kill it.
Eventually, she takes a deep breath, and walks up to her.
"Nora," she says. The orange haired girl turns around, beaming with joy.
"Hi Yang!" Nora replies. Yang attempts a weak smile. "Working on the reload pattern for Ember Celia some more?"
"Uh, no," Yang mutters. Nora brushes off Yang's lack of energy as lack of sleep due to studying. "Nora, can you sit down for a minute?"
"Can you give me a half hour or so?" Nora asks, pointing her thumb behind her, where Magnhild is separated into two pieces. "I've just figured out what's been causing the lag between transformations. All I need to do is calibrate the grenade launcher's barrel-"
"I'd really rather tell you now, Nora," Yang interrupts. Nora knows that Yang gets kind of cranky from lack of sleep, and would rather not have the entire armory explode from annoying her too much.
"Alright," she says, and sits on the bench next to her weapon. Yang looks down nervously for a moment, gulps, and looks up.
"It's about Ren," Yang starts.
"Wait a minute," Nora says, holding her hand up. "Is this about the ursa dust carcass leaking from my team's room? 'Cause that's my bad, I just thought that it was super cute, and if I could get it back to Beacon in time-"
"No," Yang says. "There was...an accident."
"Well, yeah, the White Fang blew a hole in the city, I'd say that's a teeny bit of an accident."
"Right, well, you know how Ren stuck around to help clean up and move the civilians back in?" Nora nods.
"He told me to head back here and he'd be back by dinner time," she says. Yang curses herself for volunteering herself to be the one to tell her. "Wait, he didn't get a date, did he? Is she cute? If so, I'll need her address."
"Nora," Yang says. "Did you know that Ren is allergic to King Taijitu venom?" Nora thinks for a moment, then remembers something.
"Well, I remember him getting really sick when we were kids on a field trip, and he got poked by a small one. But it was only a few days old, tops."
"Right. Well, he got bit again, only this King Taijitu was about twenty years old." Nora looks at Yang curiously.
"What are you getting at, Yang?" she asks. Yang takes a deep breath.
"The venom broke straight through is aura, and he started seizing. He's in the hospital now in critical care. The...the doctors don't think he'll recover."
Nora stares at Yang for a few seconds, then her smile returns.
"Is this a joke?" she asks. "Wait, are we planning a surprise party for him? Huh, I thought his birthday is a few months away still." Yang remains silent, not knowing what to say. Nora's smile slowly fades as the seriousness dawns on her. "He...he's in critical care?"
"Nora, I…" Yang starts, but runs out of words.
"From a...a snake bite?" Nora says with a quiver in her voice, partially to herself. She starts to feel lightheaded and drops from the bench, dizzy.
"Want a ride to the hospital?" Yang offers. Nora stares off into space as the situation starts to fully set in, what this means to her and everyone else, what tomorrow is gonna be like, and if her life will ever be the same again.
"You have to ask?" Nora replies.
Yang and Nora walks through the doors of the ER, and Yang leads Nora through a series of bleach white hallways and silent people. Countless thoughts are buzzing through Nora's mind; thoughts, memories, emotions collected through her years of knowing Ren. She forces herself to remain on the positive ones and deny entry to the ones questioning the future.
"There you guys are," Blake says, walking out of the restroom. She looks at Nora. "You good?" Nora hesitantly nods.
"Anything change?" Yang asks as they walk. Ren's room is at the end of the hallway.
"Nothing," Blake replies. "He's in a coma now, and the doctors aren't sure how to pull him out of it. One of them took Ozpin outside the room and said something to him, but he hasn't spoken since."
"Surely they have some sort of solution for this," Nora says shakily. "I mean, other people are allergic to grimm venom, lots actually. There's gotta be a cure, or a vaccine, or a drug they can give him."
"Well, last I heard they're pumping him with adrenaline to keep his heart going in the hopes that Ren will just pump the venom out."
"So he's gonna be ok?" Blake looks at Yang, who only shrugs.
They reach the end of the hallway and enter the room.
The room is packed with people; Ruby, Weiss, Pyrrha, Jaune, Glynda, Ozpin, Port, Oobleck; even Zwei sits loyally next to Ruby, tail wagging and tongue hanging loose. Ren lays on the bed in a hospital gown. His face is pale, lips blue, and is linked to a multitude of beeping and blinking machines by at least a dozen cables.
"Hey, Nora," Ruby says sweetly. Nora holds up her hand, then lets it fall limp again. This is starting to be too much for her to handle. Ozpin steps forward.
"Nora Valkyrie," he says. Nora smiles weakly.
"Thanks for coming, Mr. Ozpin," she says. Ozpin gives a small smile; a rare moment for him.
"I'll always support my students to the end," he says.
"The...end?" Nora repeats. "But...I thought he had adrenaline or whatever, to get the venom out, right?" She looks at Blake, who timidly turns away. Ozpin gets on one knee and places his hand gently on Nora's shoulder, meeting her on eye level.
"Nora, Ren is extremely allergic to Taijitu venom," he says slowly. "If it burned through his aura and put him in a coma this quickly, he'll have to fight for long and hard to get out of it." Nora looks at Ren again. The heart rate monitor's line is barely pulsing. She walks over to him with shaking legs and holds his cold hand.
"Do you want some time alone?" Ozpin asks.
"Yes, please," Nora says quietly. Ozpin nods to everyone in the room, and they slowly start to funnel out. Zwei runs up to Nora, stands up on her little legs and barks, tongue and tail still excited without a care in the world. Ruby rushes up and picks him up. She and Nora make eye contact, and Ruby touches Nora's shoulder.
"Hang in there, girl," she says. Nora smiles, and Ruby and Zwei leave the room.
Nora turns back to Ren, squeezes his hand, and closes her eyes. She can feel the connection being made, and the blackness turns into white.
Nora and Ren's semblance is completely unique and, even more strange, perfectly identical. It doesn't give them power in the physical world like most other semblances; it allows them to allow their mind to enter a world in a spiritual realm, made out of the consciousness of the user. There have been cases of psychic semblance sin the past, such as Pyrrha, but what makes Ren and Nora so strange is that they can enter the same realm and interact with each other just like on Remnant. It's like they have been connected since birth.
They call it Home, and have been visiting it regularly since they discovered it.
"Ren?" Nora calls out into the void. The white starts to turn into the other colors of the spectrum, but it's all fuzzy.
"Ren!?" Nora calls out again. Home starts to take shape, using the memories from Nora's brain.
She's at Ren's 7th birthday party, when she threw her piece of cake at another girl flirting with Ren, and had to be dragged outside before she could figure out how to break the girl's legs.
She's running through the woods with Ren playing their made up game, Hunter and Huntress. Ren is holding two bent sticks, and Nora is holding a toy hammer; original Magnhild and StormFlower.
She and Ren talk down a group of bullies trying to mug a Faunus boy at school. Again, Nora is dragged out, but this time she accomplishes her goal. Ren transferred to her new school after she was expelled.
They're standing next to each other at their graduation, before they arrived at Beacon. They went to a party afterwards, and Nora got a tad drunk there. Now that she's viewing it in Home, she sees it clearly for the first time.
Ren is holding Nora over a toilet as she empties her stomach of the spirits, sighing every time she belches and continues vomiting again. This goes on for a solid five minutes until Nora goes silent. Ren stands her up next to the sink, feeds her a cup of water, tilts her head back to make her gurgle, then lets the water fall back into the sink. He repeats this two more times.
"Feeling better?" he asks. Without warning, Nora turns to Ren and kisses him on the lips. They've kissed each other on the cheek before, but in a friendly manner. There was a certain energy to this kiss that couldn't ever be replicated artificially. Ren allows Nora to stay on his lips for a moment, then gently pulls her away.
"I love you," hungover Nora murmurs, then falls asleep in Ren's arms.
"You tasted terrible," Ren says behind Nora, making her jump in surprise.
"Ren!" she exclaims. He's in his uniform, his hair neatly trimmed, his pink eyes beaming above a winning smile. She wraps her arms around him as tightly as she can. Ren pats her on her head.
"Seriously, I should've washed you out at least five more times," Ren says. "I can still taste the vomit sometimes." Nora laughs, which gradually turns into crying. They stand there in the middle of Home, Ren silently comforting Nora as they've done for each other for forever.
"I thought you were dead," Nora says, releasing Ren from his grasp. Ren smirks and brushes a tear from Nora's cheek.
"Well, the snake is," he says. Nora chuckles.
"I thought I was supposed to be the positive one in the bad situation?"
"I think you have your hands full right now." Nora hugs Ren again.
"Please come back," she says into his shoulder.
"Sorry, Nora, I can't," Ren says. Nora breaks away, a look of horror on her face.
"What!?" she exclaims. Ren smiles warmly.
"I'm leaving, Nora," she says gently. "I'm not gonna wake up."
"But...but you can't leave yet! We still have to graduate from Beacon, and fight grimm, and break Cardin's legs, and-"
"And what's stopping you from doing all those things without me? I'm leaving, yes, but this isn't goodbye, Nora."
"But we've done everything together!" Nora squeaks, the tears returning to her eyes. "What am I supposed to do alone?"
"You're not alone, Nora," Ren says. Scenes from Nora's time at Beacon flashes before her; her team and team RWBY fighting the Nevermore and Deathstalker together, the food fight, the dance, the countless lunches with her friends. "You're surrounded by many people that truly care for you. You're stronger than you think. You'll get through this. You won't let yourself do anything but." Nora chokes back tears.
"Will you stay here?" Nora asks.
"No, I'll be somewhere else, somewhere far away from here." Ren puts her finger on Nora's mouth before she could protest. "But we will meet again. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or the day after, but we will see eachother again, in the place that I'm going."
"...You aren't talking about...death, are you?" Nora asks. Ren laughs.
"Of course not, this is Remnant we're talking about, the possibilities are endless. Keep coming here, and one day you'll find my place. Got it?" Nora sniffs and nods happily. "Good." They embrace, and stay there as Ren's body slowly fades away.
"I love you, Lie Ren," Nora says.
"Yeah, I know," Ren says. His body completely disappears. "I've always known."
"Nora?" Pyrrha asks, shaking the girl's body softly. Nora's eyes bolt open.
"Huh!? What!?" she says, eyes darting around the room. They land on the heart rate monitor's flatline and constant beep.
"You blanked out for a while," Weiss says. Ruby, Blake, Yang and Jaune are also in the room.
"Ren passed away a few minutes ago, while you were standing there," Blake says. Nora looks at Ren's face. He looks at peace. "You weren't in the way, so the doctor let you be."
"He said Ren didn't feel any pain," Ruby reassures. Nora nods, rubbing Ren's hand.
"What were you...doing, anyway?" Weiss asks. "You were standing there for fifteen minutes. You never moved a muscle." Nora slowly puts Ren's hand on this chest.
"Just thinking," she says.
"You need some time alone?" Yang asks.
"No," she says. "Let's go back to Beacon and sort through Ren's stuff."
"You sure you're up for that?" Jaune asks.
"Of course," Nora reassures, smiling. "Ren's home now. And he's happy."
In loving memory of Monty Oum: Creator, animator, and dancer.
1981-2015
You won't be forgotten.