"Jaune, if there's only one thing. Absolutely one thing you take away from me, then know this: do not relent. If you go down, you go down clawing, scratching, fighting until you're so far gone death becomes respite. Despite what's in front of you. Despite the pain. Don't end up like me."
"Wha- But why wouldn't I want to? You're so strong, and capable, and you help people out without ever asking anything in return-"
A forlorn smile. Eyes misted over in recollection. Her hair, scarlet velvet draped across one shoulder.
She turned away.
"Never forget your kindness, Jaune. It is your strength above others'."
She cut a figure rimmed in gold, her armor catching the sun's radiance and making it her own.
"In the future, people may depend on you."
He saw the sun dip below the horizon, saw her gold tint crimson.
"Don't turn your back, Jaune. Die screaming if you must, but don't turn your back."
Her eyes were sleep-smeared and groggy, the lids fluttering as she regained consciousness. Slowly, the night blurred into focus, sky still obscured by the canopy of trees, stars still obscured by the perpetual, ceaseless screen of twilight.
Bright yellow tinged crimson dancing in her vision's periphery. A fire, crinkling like orange paper.
Sitting next to it was Jaune. Shadows played across his face, flickering in time with the flames.
Ruby lifted herself upright, noticing a blanket pooling off of her torso over the gravel.
"Her name was Pyrrha."
She jumped, startled. He hadn't yet glanced towards her.
"Uh, p-pardon?" she rasped, her throat miserable.
He noticed, before walking over and handing her a bottle of water.
"That's who died for me," he clarified.
"Oh," she bit her lip. "I s-shouldn't have...I didn't mean-"
"No, it's alright," he tried to smile. "Ruby, I need to apologize. For everything I've put you through since we set out. It almost cost you your life."
Ruby stared at him with eyes like twin, waning moons.
"Um," she hesitantly drew back the rest of the cover and scooted forward onto her knees. "Why am I...y'know. Alive, if you don't me asking. I could've sworn the Nuckelavee…"
She trailed off, fidgeting with the the bandages wound securely around her stomach.
"Well," he smiled without humor. "Turns out, I do have a Semblance after all. Three guesses."
Her breath hitched, cold air sharply mingling with her lungs.
"You mean you healed me? From-" She swallowed. Her fingers, instinctively playing with the tapered hem of her wrappings.
"From that? Jaune that's, that's not just any old Semblance, it's-"
She licked her lips, the words buzzing in her throat like arid weather, like a bundle of dormant heat.
"I-I tried testing it on myself," he whispered.
He showed her his hand, loosely wrapped in gauze.
"Didn't work. It isn't healing, really, so much as…"
He brushed aside wisps of blonde as he contemplated.
"Pyrrha once told me I have a lot of Aura. More than the average person's worth. From what I can tell, I, I dunno, siphoned it from myself and gave it to you. Gave you so much that your body went into overdrive and stitched itself back together. Like it almost didn't know what to do with it all and funneled it into your natural physical processes."
Ruby's looked at him like he was something wondrous. Or perhaps frightening. Was it revulsion, pinning him with her gaze?
"Jaune, that's incredible," Something in her, trembling, not entirely from cold. "You-"
She peeked again at those inscrutable layers of ocean, peeled away and vulnerable.
"You saved me."
He lurched ahead in shock, nearly tumbling into the fire.
"No, no Ruby, I-" he scrabbled his hands together and apart in some unfathomable, wild motion; his mouth, stretched gaping in some small horror. As if to dispel the very idea of what she was suggesting.
"I didn't do anything of the sort," he stammered. "Not at all. Not like that. I let us - I let you down. This entire way I was a pitiful mess until it was too late and you were bleeding out on the floor. I gave this mission nothing and you were the one who paid the price."
Ruby blinked. She searched his eyes with hers.
She tried to grin. It was an awkward thing, tentative and lopsided. A house stitched from bare wooden seams, teetering on a seaside terrace.
"Whatever else happened, Jaune, you did save me. I…"
She faced the fire, its embers reflected wistfully in her gaze.
"Thanks. 'M not used to someone having my back. Easier that way, y'know? Free from the worry that they'll leave one day."
Her face furrowed so the lines became pronounced, her weariness so exceptionally conspicuous, crumpling her features in the telltale signs of someone about to cry.
She twiddled her thumbs. Her mouth, creased like it was stuffed with starch. But her gaze was sincere as she continued her thought.
"But nobody would come whisking out of the shadows to help if things got bad, like you did. So, um. Thanks."
"That's an awfully positive outlook," Jaune mumbled. "I was just afraid, you know. Scared that I really am scum who abandons a friend when the chips are down. If I left you there, I would be beyond reproach. I wouldn't be able to look her in the eye when I finally die."
She craned her neck slowly, peering at him thoughtfully.
"Are we, then?"
"Uh, what?"
"Friends, I mean."
At his dumbfounded visage - eyes slightly bulged, mouth open but strained from the throat up, resembling a frog - Ruby actually released a nervous giggle.
From the light of the tickling fire, the bridge of his nose dusted pink.
"I'm sorry, too," Ruby spared him, her hands folded in her lap, suddenly contrite. "For going a little nuts before. I...it was just a lot to handle, what we were doing, but it was 'cause of me the Nuckelavee came and-"
"Ruby, there's nothing to forgive," Jaune's smile trembled. "I was surprised you didn't go off on me sooner."
She smiled back, and it was like a fog finally dispersed. Still, their remorse dragged at their heels like manacles, still the cobwebs stretched taut over their hearts, but finally there seemed to be some measure of complacency between the two huntsmen. At once the air seemed clear of poison; for the first time, it smelled of sap and the rosy odor of freshly trampled grass.
For the first time, Jaune felt exposed to her. Vulnerabilities laid bare at last; no longer did murky greys waft from his vision to hers. A veritable ocean, wide and brimming with blue.
"By Pyrrha," Ruby suddenly realized, chin perched delicately on her palm. "You don't mean Pyrrha Nikos?"
"Um, w-well," Jaune nodded. "That'd be her."
Her eyes glazed over in something like wavering respect.
"She's one of the best huntsmen in the world! ...Oh, I mean, it's not like I have to tell you that," she blushed. "But, like, I don't even hold a candle to her!"
"Yeah, but she didn't like to broadcast it," he replied. "In fact, to me it seemed like…"
He trailed off, lost in the mire of his thoughts.
"I would like to hear about her," Ruby broke his reverie, smiling. "Pyrrha. If...you don't mind, 'course."
"No, I'm-" he drew a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm done skirting. You, of anyone, ought to know."
He mused, averting his gaze to the campsite. Ruby had inched his way enough that she was practically spooled to his side like thread. The both of them, staring listlessly into the crackling flames.
"A small part of me knew I needed a reality check," he began. "Maybe it also knew somehow that you would be the one to give it to me, and that's why I accepted the job."
He grimaced.
"It hurts, thinking about her. About how Pyrrha died protecting me. It...consumes me, mostly. The guilt burning in my gut somehow turned into a sort of...fixation with what happened, yet at the same time I couldn't bring myself to face it."
His face, cradled by his palms as he slumped over.
"Sometimes I can't bear it, Ruby."
Silence, and with it, the night's thrumming. A cadence of creature-pitches and swirling leaves and rustled black.
"There isn't really much to tell," From his wistful ashes came a small, rueful smile. "I suppose, at sixteen, I was even more pathetic than I am now, if you'd believe."
"Jaune," Ruby responded reproachfully. "Enough of that, okay?"
"Yeah, but-" and he actually chuckled. "I'm not kidding about that much. I saw her, so strong and beautiful, and it struck me how much of a difference there was between us. She was this golden, unreachable thing and I was just a selfish brat who ran away from his backwater village to strike it big in the city."
He sighed.
"I realized too late that everywhere might as well have been the same. Run down by Grimm. Vale wasn't a kingdom anymore, barely subsisting on scraps just like its citizens. As is typical of me," he laughed. "I ran away from the fact that I had to change myself first."
"But then," and here, Ruby caught a glimpse of light in his eyes, echoed from the embers; for once, he seemed bright and truly happy, his admiration naked and golden. "I met her."
Jaune looked at Ruby, but his gaze was flung far beyond her, lost somewhere above her in stars concealed by the sheen of darkness. His throaty recollection was steeped in longing as he spoke, his fingers bunching fabric.
"At first, she refused to teach me. But I begged. Every day I'd go to any lengths to find her on the outskirts of Vale where she liked to linger and I begged her to teach me to be a huntsman. To be like her."
He chuckled.
"She told me outright that I had no idea what I was talking about and that the last thing in the world I wanted to do was be like her. Maybe she got lonely after a bit or maybe she really started to take pity on me - because I groveled, Ruby. Oh did I grovel and to this day I'm not proud of it - but I wore her down. She agreed."
Ruby could tell he remembered these moments fondly, and the corners of her lips lifted slightly in the shared reminiscence.
"Um," she piped up. "I've heard no one really knows what happened to Pyrrha after…after, y'know, Mistral. As good as she is, I didn't think she'd still be...around."
He shrugged.
"I asked her about it, yeah. She told me she didn't want to talk about it and it was pretty clear to me I wasn't gonna get much out of her. So I didn't bother."
"She could I tell I was green," he continued. "A total novice clueless about the most fundamental of things, but she was patient. She spent the better part of three years teaching me the ropes. The best years of my life, honestly."
Jaune looked over his shoulder, far beyond the thickets of night and foliage to where Vale was.
"But around the time I was finally starting to come into my own was when things started to get really bad. You've been around here for a while, Ruby, you know what I'm talking about."
She nodded, folding her knees so she could hardly see past them.
"The Grimm attacks were getting dangerously frequent. More of them in each one," Jaune peered forlornly at his bandages. "Even now, we're on a suicide mission that probably determines if Vale lives or dies."
Ruby winced, hands huddled over her abdomen, over what must be scars behind the wrappings.
"Pyrrha-" he gulped. "Pyrrha was aware that I must've known about who she was, but she was always grateful I didn't pry. She didn't like it the few times I tried. But here was - is - a time that Vale needs heroes. And she was floating around at the edge of Vale frittering her days mentoring a hopeless nobody. We went on a few hunts, sure, but mostly just to teach me, and-"
He sucked in a hoarse lungful of breath.
"She was Pyrrha the Champion. I felt like it was my fault that she wasn't realizing her potential, that Vale was in these dire straits and she wasn't at the frontlines. She told me with no small certainty that it wasn't because of me. And-"
He gnawed his lip.
"Pyrrha, people are dying! I...I don't understand. If people saw that you were there, fending off the Grimm-"
"This isn't up for discussion, Jaune," she told him stiffly.
"I want everyone to see what I see. To know how great you are! If you were out there-"
"Enough, Jaune. They don't need me."
"Are you kidding?! P-Pyrrha, Vale's being eaten alive, you could change everything. You're the best around."
"I can't."
"Who says?"
"I do."
Gravel crunched underfoot as Jaune pushed off of the side of the cabin towards her.
"Pyrrha, please," he implored, eyes downcast inches away from her folded arms.
"It," her teeth, cleaved together. "Is none of your business. I can't help, and that's final."
"But why not-"
"Because I can't be trusted, Jaune!"
The flames had dwindled to glowing fumes, and the two of them sat there like shadows or husks, no longer thrown into sharp relief by light. As if they were filmy constructs of themselves, illusory and liable to disperse like faded smoke.
"At times," Jaune whispered. "It was like she hated herself. When she looked in the mirror, she didn't see what I saw."
Ruby reached out, feeling her way through the darkness to grasp his hand. They let their fingers drift like wisps threaded together.
"I," his tongue caught, but he jarred himself to speech. "I went and tried to help in her stead. Thought that maybe as soon as I helped fight the Grimm, have those couple of notches on my record, that I could tell people who taught me. I could - I could prove to them who Pyrrha was."
He shook his head.
"After all that, I learned nothing. Not a thing. A reckless greenhorn in over his head-"
His hair hung morosely in front, made twined gold by the few smoldering embers.
"I went in the forest alone. Pyrrha was particularly well-versed in solo combat versus Grimm like you, Ruby, and I thought I'd learned enough from her to take down one of the smaller ones."
His visage crumpled like something sour on his tongue. Bitterness, lining the roof of his mouth.
"Even just walking in, I already knew I'd made the mistake of my life. It was pressing in all around me, Ruby. The fear. Stuffed against me at every angle and I was choking on it, but that's what the Grimm live for. They smelled it like I was a morsel served up on a platter."
"I was afraid like I'd never been afraid. And they came. Well, one did. You know which. I should count myself lucky I didn't draw it to Vale itself."
A beat. And a second. And Jaune gulped the night air like it was water and he was a sailor, adrift and unquenchable.
"If I think about it," he deliberated. "I hadn't actually seen Pyrrha fight seriously up to that point. The moment I saw her swoop in to save me from the Nuckelavee - her inhibitions discarded like trash - our practice sessions seemed like a joke. It was like…"
He frowned.
"It was like she was a typhoon."
She fought like bottled lightning. Like streaming frost, like serrated fire that withered her surroundings. Blurred them until they wilted in the face of her might.
Through her coursed power.
Fingers like tendrils sloped their way towards her, meaning to sever and gouge. With the smallest of movements, she averted herself. Fleshy darkness zipped by, scrabbled the air inches from her cheek, yet she remained unflinching.
Her blade, bordered gold, a blur of crimson as she tossed it in the air. Suddenly it stood rigid, floating like it commanded attention, pointed at the beast in front.
Pyrrha magnetized her shield as well, coursing it in an arc above her, catching the creature's jaws. It stumbled, the sword gave chase, nicked its mask.
The Nuckelavee screeched, unperturbed, bearing down on her.
She weaved through the limbs crashing down overhead, a veritable forest of flesh, sword darting back into her hand. She swiped, curved herself like water, her singular weapon soaring like impending glaciers, somehow a deluge of metal.
Still, the Nuckelavee seemed uninjured. Pyrrha's breath quickened over time. Small gashes began to appear at unsteady intervals across her skin, the squeal of her blade fruitlessly beating an unkempt tattoo.
Its arms, suddenly whirling like a propeller, at speeds hitherto unwitnessed by either of them. It caught her in the chest and sent her hurtling back.
Red mingled with red. Her hair, suddenly damp with blood.
She saw him unsheathe his sword, trembling all the while.
"Jaune," she said. "Don't."
"Pyrrha, t-this…" tears gathered at his corners. "This is all my fault. I shouldn't have come out on my own, I...I-"
"Ssh," she smiled, arm huddled around her middle as she slowly stood, blood dripping past the elbow. "It's mine, if anyone's."
"I'm sorry," he wailed, hand shakily gripping the pommel of Crocea Mors. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"
She approached him, closing him in a tender embrace.
"You might have been right, Jaune," her mouth moved against his cheek. "All along. If I've got the power to do something about it, then maybe I should. Any difference at all. Any person who suffers just that little bit less."
"P-Pyrrha, what-"
"But there's something you must learn," her hair, tickling his nose, staining it pink with residual blood. "Something at all costs."
She let him go, carded strands of blonde behind his ear affectionately, and smiled. A sad, sordid expression.
Behind her thundered the monster as it drew close.
"It is that weight." she spoke it through grit teeth. Spoke it like a curse unfurled against her tongue. "That accompanies those who are made to fight. Jaune, remember one thing for me."
He stood there dumbly, confusion pervading his features, eyes trained on her, unfocused to the hell at her back.
"There should never be such a thing as heroes."
And it came, hooves searing dirt.
"She told me to run, and not look back. That she'd keep it occupied for me."
Ruby did not let the similarity of past and present escape her. What almost happened now, did. Were it not for Jaune stepping in, she would have met the same fate.
"What really kills me," he fingered his tresses. "Is that to this day, I still know next to nothing about her. Not who she really was, not why she always seemed to carry around whatever burdens she did. I never found out what she meant in the end."
Between them hung silence. The quiet, smooth and lilting, as his story finished.
It wasn't like Ruby finally found the words, after a lifetime of being unable to, but she would try.
"I-I'm not going to pretend I knew what she wanted, Jaune," she swallowed. "I'm not gonna pretend that I know how deeply you cared for her. But I do know what it's like to lose someone."
She stepped around to his front. Slowly, ever so slowly, her fingertips touched his temple. They slid aside, threaded themselves through his bangs. Brushed the unruly lengths of gold behind his ear, and Jaune was struck with reminiscence. Of thoughts of Pyrrha doing the same.
Timidly, she hugged him, and their breaths took the same cadence.
"I don't even know what my own family would say to me if they were here," her murmur, the faintest brush of lips against his ear. "All I can tell you that they exist only in us."
They drew apart. She drew a slow, lingering smile, cast in silver by the faded moonlight, where there were stars no longer.
"Our memories are all what's left. We do it for them."
His next breath, misted silver in the cold, the moon, in the wake of her fathomless, pale eyes. A bated breath, as if he couldn't quite believe for the moments she looked at him.
"For them," he repeated. "For Pyrrha."
She nodded.
"They're all we've got to hold onto," she told him.
Jaune's eyes glazed over in something like sudden defiance. An unspoken "no". Still holding Ruby loosely by the waist.
"I've got you, now."
Her eyes, molten in their widening, enveloped by the sheen of surprise. It registered, and she momentarily thought.
And the moon beamed brighter than he'd ever remembered seeing it, spilling silver into the foliage, its light a flood, gleaming into sharp relief Ruby's dimpled mirth, her fingers playing a song along his shoulders.
For she laughed. And laughed and laughed as she was drenched in moonlight.
"So you do, Jaune! So you do."
Author's Note:
Phew! Had a lot of trouble with this one. Really didn't like the initial draft, I had Ruby spew out all this nonsense that came out preachy and probably never what anyone would actually say. As it is now I dunno, but at least it has some semblance of a real conversation maybe. It's always difficult having a story told through a character's recall because it can easily come across as needless exposition. I hope I at least managed some genuine moments of connection between them.
As always this story is taking off without my conscious direction lol. This is getting a lot longer than I planned. Still, the showdown should be next chapter, so stay tuned!
Review? :D