Author's Note: And now, the moment that, statistically, about 40% of you have been waiting for… WHITE ROSE. *gong*
Weiss Schnee casually meandered down the halls of the Beacon dormitory, having returned from her meeting with Coco Adel about the uniforms for the new semester. They looked good. But this fashionable train of thought was utterly derailed when she discovered that the door to her team's room was left open.
All four of them had left it closed. To her knowledge, Blake, Yang, and Ruby were all still in classes right now.
Something was up.
She started walking rather briskly down the hall, booking into a sprint when panic took hold, until Weiss at last arrived in the doorway, only to find not an intruder, not even a custodian, but…
"Ruby?" she asked, a slight tone of surprise in her voice. "I thought you had independent study with Professor Peach right now."
"I finished up that assignment, so I just came back here," she replied, not yet facing Weiss, her eyes glued to… something.
"W-Well, didn't you have any other homework you could take care of? The semester is almost over, and you know that anything not turned in is an automatic…" She trailed off when her balance shifted arbitrarily, and she got a good look at what exactly had Ruby so unresponsive.
Her poetry journal.
One particular page of her poetry journal.
A page which contained a sonnet Weiss never intended anyone, least of all her, to lay eyes on.
"I see her, and my heart begins to race.
She speaks, I feel my nerves all jolt to life.
O! how I long to kiss her gorgeous face,
But it cannot be; it cuts like a knife.
For it is well known in the house of Schnee
That love between two likes cannot exist
(Save in select matters of family),
Yet even so, how I try to resist.
And there may come a day I rest these woes;
The day these manacles will break and bend
And I can truly unite with my Rose.
But not this day. So she is still my friend,
And with her by my side, I'll fear no fall.
No more am I the loneliest of all."
A thousand thoughts raced through Weiss' mind. Thoughts of panic, anxiety, a select few of relief, but chief among them being the only one she could manage to get out of her mouth:
"D-Do you like it?"
'Do you like it?' All the things she could have said after that girl found that poem, and the best she could come up with was 'Do you like it?'
"Yeah, it's… it's pretty good."
That could have been a worse response.
"Weiss, I… I'm no expert on contemporary poetry or anything, but…" She turned to face Weiss, and looked right at her with those beautiful silver eyes. "I think this is about me."
Her "heiress" decorum was beginning to slip. "It… It is."
"Weiss… There was a lot of strong imagery about… being trapped."
For the first time in what must have been years, Weiss' eyes began to fill up with tears. "When I was in training to be a Huntress, back in Summit Academy, I had a bit of a celebrity crush on Lisa Lavender, the newscaster. You know her. And… one day, I let it slip in front of my father that… That I thought she was cute." Her eyes slammed shut, and her hands balled up in front of her chest. "And he made it… very clear… that he didn't… want me saying that… about another girl ever again." With that, she collapsed onto her bed, her hands in her face, her body shuddering with sobs.
Ruby did the only thing she could. She sat down next to her friend, and pulled her into a gentle hug.
"And…" Weiss choked out between sobs. "And now I'm feeling this again, Ruby… About you."
"Weiss, this is nothing to be crying about."
"Wh… What do you mean?"
"Weiss… Do you remember when you told me about when you fought that huge knight?"
"...Yes."
"Do you remember why you had to fight it?"
"It… It was because…"
"It was because your dad was using that knight to force you to go to Atlas, instead of Beacon. And what did you do?"
"I… I fought it. And I won."
"Exactly. And you proved to your dad that he doesn't control your future."
The two broke the hug, and Ruby picked up the journal, showing it to Weiss. "This is like that. It may not be as huge and epic as the knight, but right now, with this poem, you're fighting, and winning, a battle for your future." Ruby took her hand. "If you wanna like girls… then that's none of his business anymore."
The heiress' grip tightened as she looked into Ruby's eyes. "And if I want to like you?"
Ruby slightly blushed, and let out a soft giggle. "Even better!"
Weiss smiled, shaking her head. "You dolt." Her free hand cupped Ruby's cheek. "You beautiful dolt."
Ruby's response was to lean forward and kiss her. It was subtle, chaste. A small step into the future. And in that moment, there was only them.
Which made the whiplash all the greater when they looked over at the doorway, to see their two teammates, standing there. Blake's expression was unreadable as ever, but Yang had an unmistakable look of sisterly pride about her.
Author's Note: So, my original idea for this chapter was to do just a Shakespeare-style sonnet, but I decided that would be far too short. So instead, I retooled it, and wrote this chapter around it, and to be perfectly candid, I think I knocked this one out of the park.
Ladybug's coming up, so stick around, lovelies.
