Chapter 1: All Our Days
(the day the letter came)
He doesn't say anything.
His mouth is shut tightly in a thin line of cracked lips surrounded by dirty blond stubble and a vaguely disheveled soul patch, and remains still. And tense.
He doesn't look at the young girl standing motionless at the base of the stairs, six feet away, to the right.
His bleary, bloodshot eyes are fixed somewhere between the window and the ceiling, off to the left. He seldom blinks, and when he does, it is slow and his cheeks and brow scrunch around his eyes in order to force the dry, unwilling lids shut. Then they open again, hesitant and unfocused before finding the image only he can see above the window, the image that is neither here nor now.
Save for the eyes and the alarmingly slow rise and fall of his chest, Taiyang Xiao Long could pass for a statue - a miserable statue, so fractured beneath the surface that the slightest movement could shatter it.
Or a corpse, whose life had only just dissipated from its eyes.
The girl tries again.
"Daddy?" her tiny voice croaks. She swallows hard, sniffling in the process. She wipes mucus from her upper lip with the back of her right hand, small fingers trembling.
Silence.
Ten seconds pass. The light of the setting sun streams through the windows, casting long shadows of still bodies against the cozy wood cottage paneling. Ambient particles of dust float lazily around, winking in and out of sight.
She sniffles once more as her nose continues to run, and he blinks again, still slowly. Painfully.
"Dad?" she forces out with an ounce of added courage. Her voice does not waver this time, and she is momentarily surprised by its clarity.
She's not entirely certain, but his chest appears to stop moving for a brief moment before he blinks again, breaking the long pause before what should have been the next one.
But his eyes don't open again.
They remain closed, his facial muscles slowly contorting around his nearly soulless sockets. Now she's sure he's stopped breathing, and a spark of panic ignites in the child's belly, prompting her throat to tighten and her own breathing to stop for a split second, before-
He lets out a ragged sigh, voice cracking slightly as his eyes open more quickly than before, seeming to wander for a second before finding hers. He has to turn his head down and to the right slightly in order to meet her pleading gaze, and her panic gives way to an eerie stillness.
Bright blue eyes (although she's known them to be far more brilliant), tainted by an unhealthy glow of red veins snaking through white, stare through the dark, baggy sockets into her own eyes, which she knows to be purple - a shade he once somberly described as "lilac: the most beautiful blend of blue and red".
He holds her bleary gaze for two long seconds as his own mouth quivers, then hesitantly cracks open. He appears to form a thought, and then she's sure he's about to verbalize it. She's sure he's going to answer her desperate cries, and smile and embrace her and speak soft words of reassurance and stroke her scalp, filtering his hands through her long mess of blonde hair like he and Mom did every time she woke up crying from the nightmares - those terrible, lonely nightmares.
"…Y… Yang…" he slowly wheezes out, too high pitched to be the Daddy she knows.
Yang hesitantly reaches out to him with her right hand, approaching the side of the low green couch, trying to initiate contact.
As he follows her eyes (but not her outstretched hand), there is a moment of clarity - of recognition, and sympathy, and connection - and then his eyes widen, lose focus, and he's looking back up at the ceiling, trapped in a staring contest with another phantom.
The girl's arm begins to shake, and her stomach tightens, and intense heat burns in her face, stinging her eyes. Her vision becomes too cloudy and she squeezes her eyes shut, jerking her face towards the floor. Her breathing becomes ragged and uneven and her arms lock themselves to her sides, fists clenched and shaking.
The sobbing begins again. Fresh tears wash over her sore face, mucus welling up in her sinuses and slowly making its own escape attempt through her dry, reddened nostrils. Her throat is still sore from before, and it quickly becomes hard to breathe. Her voice gives out and she hiccups for air.
Somewhere in this mess the girl slowly stumbles back towards the staircase, and she begins an unusually long hike up, tripping up every third or fourth step but always catching herself with her right hand before pushing upward and onward with all four limbs.
The soreness and the wetness and the tightness remain, but she regains some semblance of control as she rights herself at the top of the stairs. Swollen lilac eyes still glued to the floor in front of her and framed by her unkempt yellow locks, she drags her feet down the hall to her shared bedroom.
With the sobbing subsided, what little energy she has left becomes focused internally, as her mind swirls with thoughts responding once more to the repetitive surges of emotion.
She was so sure that this time he would snap out of it, and that she would be in his arms again. But instead, she's only more sure than ever that Daddy is gone. Maybe not like…
Not like Mom.
(She sniffles as she approaches the open doorway, and she raises her head to look inwards. Her neck is so sore.)
But he's far away. Somewhere Yang can't reach. Somewhere that he can't come back from. Not even when his own daughter is begging for him to help her understand, to cry in comfort, to cope. Not even when his youngest is-
Sobbing.
Whimpering.
A tired and desperate mix of the two snaps the girl's unfocused eyes from the door she's been standing next to for… how long? towards the bed with the deep red pillowcases and comforter, where the small body of a pale-skinned toddler, swathed in red, pink and black patterned flannel pajamas, shakes slightly. As the elder sister wipes her eyes clear of excess moisture she thinks she can make out darker patches on the pillowcase, which she immediately knows to be the result of tears not unlike her own.
A sudden clarity forces aside all other thoughts as she approaches her shaking baby sister. The not-quite-a-toddler-anymore seems to have tossed and turned enough to have removed herself from what is now a tangled mess of blankets, and the older-but-still-very-much-a-child sister is sure her sibling is now shivering from a combination of confused misery and the evening chill that is blowing in through the open window. She doesn't have much reach, but with some effort she bends over the younger girl's tiny frame and pulls the blankets back over her and up to her chin. As the older girl reaches back she brushes her right hand gently across her mostly-sleeping sister's face, wiping away what must have been a recent stream of tears.
A subtle breeze of chilled air prompts Yang to break away from this tender moment to approach the window. She has to grab a simple wooden chair from the desk in the corner, but once upon it she thinks she has enough height to reach the inner window pane, which she stretches up to in order to pull it down. Her miniature grasp on the wood of the frame isn't giving her much leverage, though, even when she stands on her tippy toes for that extra inch.
She shifts her weight forward, pushing down with her fingertips, and-
She's tumbling down, and her knees both hit something, there's a loud slamming of wood on wood, and her forehead feels a stab of pain, and then she's tangled in a mess of her own yellow hair and discarded clothes on the carpeted ground next to a toppled chair and she is still, and quiet.
As she begins to register her fall, the associated bruises quickly developing in her knees and forehead, though confused at first, are suddenly sending all kinds of messages of pain to her brain. She gasps, her throat raw, but cannot find the strength – no, the desire – to cry out.
Instead she just sits there in stunned silence, wondering if he would even come to her if she did. And her head throbs with pain and her knees feel swollen but she comes to the conclusion once more, with greater finality:
Daddy's gone.
She sniffles once more and gingerly pushes herself up and around with her right arm, orienting herself amidst the miniature disaster zone below the now closed window. She considers just lying there and giving into her misery and exhaustion, when-
Sobbing. Weeping. Crying. Choking.
Yang forces herself back to her feet, and props herself up against the bed, legs uneasy. Her sister shudders with each whimpering cough, and the blonde is suddenly clear-headed. There is only one course of action.
She clambers upon the far side of the bed, and quickly (but carefully) crawls over to the child in the red and pink and black pajamas, who groggily turns onto her back, coughing, trying to catch her breath after choking on her own sadness. Her eyes remain closed, and the elder sister is sure she's only half-awake at most, but fresh tears meander their way down well-trodden paths on the tiny girl's cheeks.
Yang pulls on the blankets, gently slipping underneath them to bring her sister closer. She wraps her arms underneath and around the somewhat frail younger girl, bringing her into a warm embrace, clutching her head against her own longer torso. The older girl feels some moisture seep into her oversized tan T-shirt, but her sister's breathing evens out and within minutes Yang is certain that she's fully asleep again.
She smiles ever so slightly despite the throbbing in her head, and her fingers make their way into her sister's dark hair, caressing her scalp ever so tenderly.
And Yang speaks to her, low and soft, barely even a hum, repeating the same words over and over again like a solemn vow - a promise, full of a love she didn't know she was capable of after today - before she lulls herself to sleep.
"It's okay, Ruby. I'm here. I will stay with you."
Hello there!
It's been a long time since I attempted anything like this. I've been a RWBY fan since a the premiere of the first episode, and since then I think it's safe to say I've developed a pretty strong obsession - with one character, in particular.
"Scathing eyes ask that we be symmetrical, one sided and easily processed. Yet every misshapen spark's unseen beauty is greater than its would be judgement."
As with all elements of the show, every idea is imbued with so much potential - and while most things are on a slow burn, they do tend to pay off. Yang's story is something I eagerly anticipate witnessing more of, and on a deeper level. Since V4 there is so much going on beneath the surface and there's been so little screen time (as of now) to address it appropriately. So while I trust that the writers will do their part to deliver on this potential, I couldn't help but feel compelled to capitalize on the feels and flush out key moments in her life on my own terms (hopefully mostly, if not entirely, canonically).
I'm not sure where the second-person narrative came from. I guess it just helped me put myself in her shoes, and hopefully it works for you as a reader as well. Overall though, what are your thoughts? Too much? Not enough?
*EDIT (6/25/17): Thanks to CPEcho13 for pointing out the rules against second-person narratives. While I didn't like how it sounded at first when I changed it to third-person, I made a few small additional revisions that I think helped. Perhaps starting to write in second-person and then translating/revising it is actually a valuable writing technique?
Since this was very much a spur-of-the-moment write, I can't say for sure what will come next, or when. Consider this a tentative step in the pool, and if I like the feel of it (and if you do too) then I may feel compelled to continue with more snapshots like this, and eventually (separately, maybe) some more present-day/not-quite-canon/interpreted/original material.
*EDIT (6/25/17): I think I can ride the "return to writing" high a bit longer; I've got ideas for the next chapter already and might even have it out before Canada Day (7/1)!
Between the rush of writing this on a whim and remembering how to use FF this may not be a strong or well-formatted start, so, of course, any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thanks, and happy hiatus-ing!
-kms