Port walks out of the kitchen where Oobleck and Taiyang were discussing recent events and goes to sit on the couch, where in front of him Ruby is making a drawing that her father asked her to make. Sticking her tongue out to the side, she was finishing the final touches of her masterpiece by the time the man she happened to be drawing sat behind her. It was an epic piece of a muscular man fighting off creatures of Grimm, the amount of detail in them being surprising if you compared them to the man in the same drawing. For some reason, the images of the monsters are easier for her to draw in detail than the human anatomy, to which she shown to not understanding by giving Port 12 pack abs to go with his noodle arms.
Yang however wasn't next to her sister, but was peeking over at her in an uncharacteristically shy fashion from behind the couch. She watches as her sister finishes up her magnum opus to give to the older gentleman who she knew was one of daddy's friends. As of late, she hasn't really been interacting with Ruby in any capacity that's avoidable. Besides, why would Ruby want to speak to her anyways? She promised to protect her, and at the first chance she had to do so she…
She didn't killed Ruby, she couldn't have. She's over there right now handing Port her drawing right now, she's clearly alive. But what she saw in the forest of her sister, of what was left of her sister. Yang tenses up at the images resurfacing in her mind, and grips her tiny hands into a fist. Just remembering that night hurt. It hurt more than all the days she woke up to run into Ruby's room, hoping she would be there and she had just been in a nightmare, only to be proven otherwise. It hurt more than hearing her dad weep in the middle of the night when he thought Yang was asleep, apologizing to Summer in between sobs. It hurt to remember how she failed her sister.
The pain growing to be too much, Yang rushes into her room as fast as she could and slams the door. Both Port and Ruby notices it, but while moves to walk back into the kitchen with Tai and Oobleck, Ruby stands still for a short while until choosing to walk towards Yang's room.
Oobleck takes a sip out of his thermos and sits it down on the table in front of him, sighing as he rests his elbow on said table and starts pinching the bridge of his nose. After removing his hand from his face, he begins to speak.
"Now, I understand that if you told me about… this over the phone I would be less concern about Ruby and more so about your mental health. But, a little bit of a warning about what's happening would be greatly appreciated next time Tai." the doctor stresses towards his blonde friend, his speaking pattern a fair amount slower than what would be expected from him.
Oobleck had some ideas in mind about why he was called by Tai to head over to Patch, given current circumstances with him. He thought maybe he needed someone to talk to to keep him sane. He thought that maybe he had questions about how to deal with Yang in the future, since watching her sister he ripped apart by Grimm would more than likely cause trauma that will affect her a good amount in the future. At worst, instead to keep Tai sane, he needed to talk to someone to keep him alive. While very much not like the man he has grown to know for so long, losing multiple wives and a child in less than a decade could even push the strongest of people near the edge.
What Bartholomew didn't expect when Tai opened the door was his dead daughter standing behind her father and saying hello, which in turn caused him to scream bloody murder and terrifying the poor girl. After being calmed down and profusely apologizing to a scared Ruby, he moved over towards the kitchen to talk about Tai's suddenly alive child. Port, however, needing more convincing so Tai asked Ruby to draw a picture for him and have Port watch so he can see the drawing being made in front of him and proving that, whatever she is, she's actually there.
"Sorry about that, I just… I didn't know how to explain it to you. I still don't know how to be completely honest with you." Taiyang starts off saying. Before he can get to his next sentence though, they both hear a door slam. Both Oobleck and Taiyang look towards the living room entrance for a second before Taiyang goes to speak again. However, before he can properly get a phrase out, Port walks into the kitchen and has something to say as well.
"First of all, apologies for not believing you about your daughter. You can understand my doubts, but at the end of the day a man needs to admit when he's wrong so I will. I was wrong to doubt you friend, and I'm sorry." Port says towards Tai, addressing his the same disbelief Oobleck shares, though he was more… reserved in his reaction than his hyper co-worker.
"Well, you don't need to apol-" Tai starts off saying before Port speaks up again.
"Secondly, your daughter really understands how to create art! Look at this, it's great." Port tells Tai as he shoves the drawing into his face. "She perfectly captures my physique, besides the arms of course. That needs some work, but every great visionary has to start somewhere!" he proclaims as Taiyang sighs deeply and Oobleck pinches the bridge of his nose once again.
"Port, the focus is not on my daughter's art. It's on my daughter herself. I'm glad you like the drawing and all... but don't forget why I asked Ruby to draw that." he tells his porky friend. After nodding his head, he takes his seat at the table. After Port sits down, Tai begins speaking again. "So, you all have seen what I have been seeing the last 2 days. There's Ruby, like nothing ever happened to her. Now, would any of you have any possible idea on why that is? Any theories involving the dead coming back to life discussed among professors?" he inquires from two fellow professors.
Port looks at the once again father of two and simply shrugs his shoulders. "I don't really study and look into that type of stuff. Mainly new ways to kill Grimm." he told his friend honestly.
Tai looks over at Oobleck, whose adjusting his glasses as he hums. "Well, nothing historical I can think of sounds anything like this. Well… nothing universally recognized at least."
Now, that's an interesting way to phrase that. "'Nothing universally recognized'? So what are the less recognized beliefs that explains my daughter coming back to life?" Tai questions the spiked hair doctor.
"Well… the main one that some of the more… spiritual members of the community would say is that Ruby never came back to begin with." Oobleck answers as the father sighs.
"Do we need to go back to square one and prove she's real again? Because I know I'm not the only one seeing who, o-or what is in there" Taiyang says, pointing into the living room where Ruby was drawing earlier.
"That's unnecessary Tai, because I'm not implying that she isn't in there. Just that she's not alive in there." he clarifies, as he gets a 'huh?' from the man in response. Oobleck proceeds to, once again, make it more clear as to what he's saying. "In some ancient beliefs in how the world works, some that even date back further than the two brothers, it was believed that our time on Remnant wasn't tied down from our physical form. That that was only a singular stage of our lives. After the death of the physical body, your spiritual life began. You would basically be an… apparition of sorts."
"A ghost. You think my daughter is a ghost? You?" Taiyang asks his friend, eyebrow raised by his guest given how said beliefs he's talking about are ones that he never held for as long as they known each other. Of course, maybe seeing is believing.
"It's the only thing that seems to fit. No way her body could've healed from that attack, no matter how much aura she could have used. And even if she was healing, we would've known that and we wouldn't have buried her. However, the fact she remembers her past life and the people in it proves this isn't some random girl playing pretend." the doctor explains the thought process that led to this conclusion to the father as Port speaks up for the first time in a while.
"Then how can she hold crayons to draw or hug him? Wouldn't she just, gone through them and not actually made physical contact with?"
"The ability to go through physical objects in these beliefs have always been that, an ability. Something that they can do when needed, but not something that always happens. She could just, be choosing not to use it." Oobleck rationalizes before thinking up a more darker reason, one that causes a downcast look to sweep across his face like a storm cloud. "...or maybe she doesn't realize who she is now. Maybe, in her mind, she's still alive."
The storm of realization branches out across the room as the gravity of the implication sinks down onto them like Tai's heart just sunk for the first time since his daughter came back into his life.
Finally, after a period of silence, Taiyang speaks. "When she first came home, tears down her cheeks and hugging me, she talked about how… how Yang and her went into the woods and that she just, was left in there and got lost and scared… and talked about how she had to find her way home on her own. She never mentioned anything about Grimm, about Qrow saving them, nothing of the sort. It was like, that never happened to her." he recalls what happened before covering his mouth, trying to hold back tears before removing his hand to speak again after regaining composure. "I never thought that… I just thought that it was just too painful to talk about. That she just, wasn't ready to speak up about it. I should've known something was off, but I was just too busy trying to grasp my baby girl coming back to me…"
"But how is it that she came back when seemingly nobody else has before? Is it something to do with a semblance?" Port interjects as Oobleck shakes his head, running a hand through his spiky hair.
"No, that would change how we know semblances to be."
"This changes how we know living to be Bart, who's to say that our knowledge of semblances are more grounded than our knowledge on the human life?"
"Because as I said, how living is viewed isn't universally accepted. The mortal life is only the beginning for some people. And with Ruby in mind, those people might be right."
"Okay, so why is it that the next part of Ruby's life involves her still being in the mortal world?" Tai questions this time.
"...maybe because her first part wasn't finished yet." he states, earning a couple of raised eyebrows from the group which makes the thin man explain in more detail. "In some ancient stories, a lot from faunus folklore, there would be heroes who were slain before completing their God given mandate, which resulted in them given the ability to come back and finish said job."
"Yeah, but that's folklore. Stories, fairytales. There is nothing about this world that involves fairytales." Port says, brushing off the explanation.
"And nothing in this world can explain the dead coming back to life, yet here we are. Hanging around in the kitchen of a man who was playing with his daughter a while ago, a daughter that, as of a few days beforehand, was inside a coffin buried six feet underground. Maybe our world is wrong Peter, this wouldn't be the first time humanity as a whole accepted a falsehood as fact. I promise you that."
After Oobleck's comments, everyone just got to the table and sat around it in silence. Letting everything talked about now and everything that has happened recently soak in. Minutes go by in complete stillness. Finally, Taiyang poses one final question to his doctor friend.
"You said that in those stories, the person comes back because their story wasn't finished. What story is my daughter a hero of that she has been brought back from the death?"
Author's Note: Hey everyone, guess who isn't dead? That's right, this guy isn't. Luckily. Won't go into details about why this hasn't been updated for so long, let's just say I wasn't in a mood to write and that same mood led to some not good things which delayed this even more. Originally, I was going to add a third scene into this chapter this but I have chosen that you guys have waited long enough for a second chapter so that has now become chapter 3. Hooray.
Anyways, there has been a large gap between when I first wrote this and when I finished it and I'm sure the quality will make it clear when the gap happened so feel free to roast me for any quality drops and put it out! Seriously, this won't get any better if you stay silent about any issues or errors, use that review function damnit. Until then, this is Wolfie telling you that I'm going to try my best to not make the next gap in between chapters be this big.
Thanks you for reading the Impossible Kid, and I hope you continue to do so.