"I wish there was a way I could make it so that last five minutes hadn't happened," bemoaned Ren. He was sitting by the fire with his hands folded on front of him, poking at it with a stick. "I shouldn't have yelled at her like I did…"
"That was yelling?" quipped Qrow from the other side fire, "I think I've whispered louder trying not to wake Yang up when she was a baby."
Neither boy paid the older Huntsman any mind. Both were more wrapped up in their own troubles, and, weird as it was, Qrow's sardonic brand of jokes had more or less become background noise.
"Ren, it's Nora," Jaune stated, "she'll probably forget all about it when she and Ruby come back. ...n-not that I'm saying sea stupid or anything, she's not! I'm just…."
"It's fine," Ren reassured his friend, "I know what you mean." He knew Nora wasn't the type to hold grudges, no matter how much her constant eagerness to break legs said otherwise; most of the time she either dealt with the problem immediately (often with violence) or she just paid it no mind. Aside from the very short list of things she took personally, nothing really seemed to negatively faze her, which was something he'd always appreciated about his childhood friend.
And that was what bothered him about all this. He normally enjoyed her exuberance, and even the way she could make the most mundane of events seem like something exciting...but for some reason this was the one time she turned an anthill into a mountain that he decided "No, you need to tell it right". It hadn't even been something that built up over time, either: one minute he was tending the fire, and the next he was calling her stupid and forgetful.
"Geez," Qrow spike up again, "I know this isn't the most festive of places, but you kids are just being depressing right now." He sat up a light straighter, "How about I tell you some dirty jokes that would make the girls blush if they were here"
Jaune looked up at the older man, caution plastered on his face. "I though Ruby was your niece; you want to hear stuff like that?"
Qrow chuckled, "Oh hell no! That kid's too innocent for her own good sometimes, she probably short circuit if I told one of my jokes." Then he adopted a contemplative pose, scratching his chin with one hand while he propped up his elbow with the other. "Then again, maybe it's time she lost some of that naïveté…."
Well that's...unsettling, to say the least, Ren thought, his thoughts mirroring the aghast expression Jaune now wore.
"I'm joking," Qrow quickly amended, "Sheesh, a guy tries to lighten the mood a little…."
"We're back!" Ruby announced as she and a melancholy looking Nora returned to the meager campsite. "...is everything OK here?" she asked.
"Fine, if boring," Qrow answered, shrugging, "How about you two?"
Ruby glanced over at Nora, who'd unceremoniously plopped down by the fire and was aimlessly stirring her food. "Well, Nora's not angry anymore, so there's that."
And indeed, it seemed like Nora's earlier vitriol had all but vanished, replaced with whatever seemed to be plaguing Jaune during dinner.
"How about you?" Ruby glanced back to her uncle, specifically the makeshift bandages wrapped around his torso, "Does it still hurt?"
Qrow shook his head. "Nah, no more than it normally does, anyhow. I'll be fine." His expression softened a little when he noticed how crestfallen Ruby looked at the news. "So we couldn't find any medicine, big deal. It's not like I'll croak in the night or anything; I've had worse injuries than this." He chuckled sardonically, "More disappointed about the booze, honestly…."
"OK then…." Ruby didn't sound convinced, but refained from further comments as she sat back down and tucked into what was left in her bowl. Nora seemed like she wanted to say something, but that desire would always die before she opened her mouth.
The rest of their supper was eaten in an oppressive silence, only broken by the clinking of utensils.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
After dinner was finished Ruby offered to do the washing, if only to give herself some time to think. She worried about her friends and Uncle, but a therapist she was not, so she didn't know what she could do to put everything back to the way it was before coming to Kuroyuri.
First it had been something with Jaune- she still didn't know the details of what went down- that turned him moody. Sure, ever since meeting Uncle Qrow he'd been more solemn and less cheery than normal, but he'd still cracked the occasional joke, even if it wasn't that good. (Still better than Yang's puns, by a long shot!) Now he seemed lost in his own world, only responding when someone spoke to him first.
Then there was...whatever had happened with Ren and Nora. By all accounts the two of them were closer than ever after Beacon and what happened afterwards; whatever arguing she could remember them doing was always light and about silly things that didn't seem important. In fact, this was the only time she could ever recall Ren raising his voice to Nora (as raised as Lie Ren got, at least…) or sounded angry at her. And they'd seemed perfectly before dinner, so whatever was affecting Jaune probably wasn't responsible for...that.
And there was still that constant feeling of...she couldn't actually describe what it was like, all she knew was that it was a bad feeling, like something bad was going to happen it they didn't leave this place. It was unclear if the others felt it too, but even if they did...and the most frustrating part was that she had no idea what was causing it, either. "It" could very well be what was responsible for everyone acting so weird, but without proof it was nothing but a theory.
At least Uncle Qrow seemed to be fine. You know, for having a giant hole in his stomach.
There was a well not too far from where they made camp, and Ruby could still see everyone clearly, so if anything happened to either her or the others they'd know. She finished scrubbing the bowl she was scrubbing and dunked it in the bucket before setting it to dry on the lip of the well and grabbing another to repeat the process.
She shrieked a little when she suddenly felt a crawling sensation on her thigh, immediately leaping to her feet and batting at her leg. This managed to make the crawling sensation stop, but now the culprit, a good sized spider, was attached to the hand she'd swatted with.
"Ew, gross!" she cried, furiously shaking her hand in an attempt to dislodge her little stowaway. This didn't have any significant effect, so in desperation she plunged her hand into the bucket of water. Not that she was scared of spiders- not as much as Pyrrha had been, anyhow- but she doubted anyone else would enjoy one crawling across their hand like this one had. After leaving said appendage submerged for a good minute she finally pulled it out, this time sans spider.
She let out a sigh of relief.
"Everything OK over there, sport?" her uncle lazily called over to her.
"Uh, y-yeah, everything's fine!" she called back, "It was just a bug!"
"Sissy!" the man retorted with no real malice behind it.
Once her pounding heart calmed down a bit more Ruby checked to make sure there weren't any other spiders or bugs crawling around the immediate area and, satisfied there weren't, finished wiping down the bowls, pouring the used water out on the ground.
She hadn't gotten a good look at the arachnid before drowning it, but thankfully she didn't remember seeing any bone like plates that the Grimm had; there was a spider like Grimm that was considered dangerous despite its small size, but she'd only seen it in textbooks, never in the wild. It was apparently quite rare, and for that she was thankful, since a bite from a Rachnae was fatal.
Needless to say, Ruby would probably be checking her sleeping bag extra careful tonight.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
The rest of the evening amounted to more of the what happened at dinner: awkward silence and vain attempts by either Ruby or Qrow to incite conversation.
If Jaune wasn't so mentally exhausted he would have probably found it more annoying than it actually was.
He lay in his sleeping bag- Ruby insisted they thoroughly check them for bugs- staring up at the night sky, the memory of earlier replaying itself in his mind. Once the shock wore off he saw that there wasn't the rotting corpse of his late friend (and possibly even paramour) grabbing his hoodie, and there were only himself, Ren and Nora in the house. While somepart of him knew that the scene was probably just due to him still being exhausted from the fight before the image of Pyrrha's face, her deathly pallor, the way half of her mouth was just bone...all of that refused to leave him alone.
Why had he seen that, though? Honestly, Ruby probably had more reason to be haunted by thoughts of the dead Huntress since she was apparently right there when Pyrrha was killed, but then again Pyrrha hadn't kissed her right before shoving her in a locker and running off to what was mostly likely an impossible fight.
He sighed and turned over to his side, his head resting in the crook of his arm. Maybe this was all just stress and he needed to sleep it off. From what he could tell that horse and rider Grimm had brought out some intense emotions in everyone, and there was still an injured Huntsman with them, so maybe a good night's rest would do the trick and they'd all be back to there old selves come the morning.
He closed his eyes, prepared to surrender to his sleepiness, but even though he felt tired enough to fall asleep his body refused to comply. Shifting his position around didn't help and only served to make him less comfortable in some cases. Counting sheep like his mom usually advised was also useless, only making him wonder why sheep were jumping over a fence in the first place.
Once again, Jaune let out a frustrated sigh; apparently not even his own mind and body would allow him a respite for today.
"Trouble sleeping?"
"Yeah…," he grunted, "Nothing is working."
"Have you tried counting sheep?"
He shrugged, "That was the first thing I tried."
"Hmm...well, maybe you just need some company. Here…."
He felt a pressure as someone laid down next to him, putting their arm over him.
"It may not be your bunny pajamas, but this is still comfortable, right?"
He nodded, humming in agreement.
"Tell me what's bothering you, Jaune. I don't like seeing you upset."
"It's...it's nothing," he said with so little conviction that even he didn't believe himself. "...OK, it's not 'nothing'; you shouldn't have died at Beacon, not after…." He glanced up at the stars again, "You shouldn't have gone to fight Cinder after...after telling me you loved me. That was just cruel."
"Would you have done any differently in my place; if you didn't know if you would love to see the next hour, wouldn't you want to make the most of what time you had left?"
"I would have traded places with you in a heartbeat," Jaune insisted, "I would have gone with you to fight her, I would have...I would have done something!"
"Oh Jaune...you couldn't have done anything."
"You don't know that! I could've-"
"No, you couldn't. You're still barely able to fight the Grimm; your friends do most of the fighting while you sit on the sidelines and play cheerleader."
This cut deeper than Jaune would have liked to admit, and what made it worse was that it wasn't exactly wrong, either. Despite his time at Beacon and all months of practical experience he'd gained after that, honestly, he still wasn't at the level the rest of Team RNJR was.
"That's not true…."
"You known it is, it's no use denying it any longer; you're still just a child playing at being an adult, a boy who put on his father's clothes and demanded to be called a man."
It wasn't! Or, at least, he didn't want to believe it.
But...when he thought about it, did he even have a chance of reaching Ruby's level? Or Ren's? Or even Nora's? He'd basically lied his way into Beacon; most of his victories could easily be considered dumb luck, and any that weren't more than likely involved his friends help in some way.
So why was he even out here helping Ruby in the first place if all he was to the team was a liability? He didn't even know what his Semblance was, or if it had been unlocked at all! He wouldn't ever say it aloud, but he'd always been a little jealous if his friends because of that.
"They're holding you back, you know."
"Who are?"
"Your friends, of course! They're what's keeping you from getting stronger! Always keeping you to the side, always stealing the kills for themselves...you'll never grow stronger if you remain in their shadows…!"
That...that couldn't be true, could it? It didn't seem in character for Ruby, Nora, Ren, or even Qrow in the brief time he'd known the older Huntsman, but especially Ruby; the girl didn't have a malicious bone in her body, and at times had been there to comfort and support him.
"She left me to die, you know."
"...who did?"
"Your friend; she was there when I was fighting, but did nothing to stop my death from happening. Is she really your friend if she just stood by and let me die?"
Ruby? Sure, she hadn't gotten to Pyrrha in time to save her, but that didn't mean she'd left her to die; the school had apparently been overrun with Grimm, White Fang troops, and out of control robots, it was no wonder Ruby didn't make it if she had to deal with all that on the way.
So then, why the insistence that she would sit back and allow a friend to be killed?
He'd had these kinds of thoughts before, aftermath of the fighting, but he eventually decided that it wasn't Ruby's fault he lost a friend. Many people probably lost friends in that attack, it just so happened His was on top of Beacon, trying to stop the woman responsible. Her loss still hurt, but moping about it wouldn't do the world any good, not if he could do something to rectify it.
So why was Pyrrha saying these things about Ruby?
"It would be better if you got rid of her, make her feel what I felt when I was gasping for breath, teach her a lesson for doing nothing to save me!"
Jaune spun around to his side, now facing his tempter; it was the same as before, with Pyrrha's face deathly pale and half rotted, half of her jaw bone naked for the world to see. The rest of her face was twisted into a wicked, devious, yet still somehow demure smile.
"It'll be easy; she's asleep, and blades pierce through skin quite nicely when their Aura isn't active."
She tried to grab at him, but it was lazy and his reflexes were more than adequate to pin her arms to the ground.
"You're not Pyrrha!" he accused, kneeling atop the apparition of his late friend and partner, "I don't know what you are, but the Pyrrha I knew would never want anyone killed, no matter how much they might deserve it; least of all Ruby!"
The apparition chuckled, a raspy, wet sound. "I haven't said anything you weren't already thinking.~"
Whatever this thing was, Jaune hated it. He hated it more than anything else he'd ever hated in his life; not just because of the things it was saying (and implying), but because it was wearing Pyrrha's face and using it to say them. It was a feeling of hatred so intense he felt like he was going to explode if he didn't do something!
He wasn't left wondering for long; the apparition tried to lean forward to bite him, so, without time to think, he rammed his head into the thing's, cracking their skills together with an audible "thud!". This left it stunned, and Jaune capitalized on the opportunity. Letting go of its arms, he clamped both of his hands into fists and starting punching it, falling into an easy rhythm.
He was so focused on the thing that he only became aware of everything else around him when Ren grabbed him from behind and pinned his arms to his side. "That's enough, Jaune!" the other boy shouted. "What the hell were you doing to Nora?"
As the adrenaline fades from his system he glanced back at where he'd been trying to sleep, his face morphing from one of anger to one of pure shock: Ruby was giving him a steely eyed glare, and clinging to her was Nora, tears streaming down her puffy face, looking like someone had just beat her up in an alley.
"...well?" Ruby demanded.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
to be continued...