I don't have anything special to say about this chapter to be honest. I just hope you all enjoy it. I also hope everyone is taking care of themselves. I present to you, chapter 25.
"Shit!" Blake cursed, spinning about rapidly as she tried to find a trail for Ruby. "We have to find her and we have to find her now!" Lily reached up and tugged on Blake's sleeve, but Blake shook her off gently. "Not now Lily, we have to find Ruby."
Yang stepped forward, eyes narrowed as she looked at Blake. "Why are you so scared? She's run off before, won't she just come back?"
Blake kept darting about rapidly, looking for some sort of indicator of the direction Ruby has disappeared, replying distractedly. "Not this time. We have to find her, help me look!"
"…Blake, you're hiding something from me," Yang said in a low voice, hands clenched at her sides. "Did you know she'd run?"
"Of course I didn't! But we have to find her!" Blake replied, before giving out a groan of frustration. "Dust dammit Ruby why don't you ever leave fucking trails?!"
Lily tried to tug on Yang's sleeve, but Yang ignored her. "Blake!" Yang reached out and grabbed Blake by the shoulders, glaring down at her. "What are you so scared of?"
Blake struggled to get out of Yang's grip, but Yang's hands just gripped on her shoulders tighter. Blake stared into Yang's eyes, noticing how the red had begun to creep in, and found she couldn't keep looking at Yang. Blake broke the staring contest and looked away at the ground. Yang's tone dropped lower, pleading. "Blake, what aren't you telling me?"
"…Ruby's hurting. Something's wrong with her," Blake replied, just as quietly.
"I know that! But what aren't you telling me? I'm her sister, I need to know!" Yang shook Blake gently, loosening her grip slightly as she realized it had become practically bruising.
"Ruby's been hurting herself. Intentionally."
Yang let go of Blake and stumbled backwards, eyes wide. She stared at Blake's meek form, shaking slightly, before she clenched her fists at her side and grit her teeth. "…you knew, and you didn't tell me?"
"Ruby made me promise not to! I told her I'd say something when we got back to Atlas, but she didn't want me to bring it up until we got here!" Blake exclaimed, trying to defend herself.
"When did you find out?" Yang seethed, eyes having gone from lilac to a pure, deep crimson.
"…Sun told me. He said it was a rumor he'd heard."
"So before we even met Ruby, you knew. That's what you mean."
Blake frantically waved her hands before her, voice pleading. "It was only a rumor! I didn't want to bring it up until I was sure! I didn't think you'd handle…it…" she trailed off.
"Because I was drunk, right? You didn't think I could take it because I'm a worthless drunk like my uncle, that's what you're saying?" Yang shot back.
"No! I didn't say that! Don't put words in my mouth!" Blake replied with some heat.
"You were thinking it! Don't fucking deny it! You threw my clothes at my head just cause I had a couple of drinks!"
Blake began shaking in place, her fists clenched, before she shouted back. "Yeah, I was angry at you! I still am! It wasn't me who abandoned this team! It wasn't me who ran off! It wasn't me who punched Weiss in the face! I stayed! I tried to help! I tried to find you three after you three left me! Left me alone, with nothing, with no one! JNPR didn't run, they worked together and made it out! But Ruby disappears and you flip out and Weiss goes off the rails and all three of you left me all alone, took away everything I had left, everything I needed to survive, you took it away! And you want to blame me for not trusting your emotional judgement when the last time I did you nearly broke Weiss' jaw and went off to become a drunk in some no name village in the ruins of the city?"
"Don't fucking blame me for Ruby leaving, she chose to!" Yang screamed back, marching up to loom over Blake.
Blake didn't back down, pushing Yang away from her and glaring at her. "I don't blame you for Ruby leaving, I blame you for you leaving!"
As the argument escalated, Weiss felt a tug on her sleeve. She'd been standing quietly, trying to come to terms with Ruby's disappearance and Blake's admission of Ruby hurting herself, and trying desperately to keep her mind on track. She felt the fog creeping in, but she didn't want to give in, not now. She needed to think straight, needed to find Ruby…wait, the tug?
Weiss glanced down to see Lily looking up at her with tearful eyes. Lily had one arm clasped over her chest, blue eyes wide and innocent with tears gathering in them. "Please make them stop. It hurts. Please, Miss Weiss, please make them stop. They need to find Miss Ruby, she's hurting, but they are hurting and so are you and please, it hurts, make them stop."
Weiss felt her heart break at the pleading tone in Lily's voice, but her words cut through the fog in her mind. She hadn't been one of the top students at Beacon for no reason. She narrowed her eyes as she dropped to one knee before Lily, placing on hand on her shoulder and speaking softly. "What do you mean, it hurts? What hurts?"
Lily bit her lip and tapped her chest. "In here, it hurts."
Weiss cocked her head at Lily. "You mean you're sad?"
Lily shook her head no rapidly. "No! I'm not sad, you guys are sad. It hurts!"
Weiss blinked rapidly, before a single thought spread across her mind in a flash. Her eyes went wide, before a calculating look spread across her face. "Lily, how do you know we are sad?"
"Because you are," Lily replied, confusion apparent on her face.
"Yes, but how do you know," Weiss said insistently.
Lily stomped her foot angrily. "Because I know!"
Weiss made a contemplative noise. "Lily, do you always know how people feel?"
Lily nodded her head. "Yeah! And you guys are hurting, and it hurts, please make it stop."
"Do you know what Ruby is feeling?" Weiss asked urgently.
"She's hurting too. She's going to the place she found me. I don't know why. But she wants it to stop hurting."
"Wait, how do you know where she's going?"
Lily stomped her foot angrily again and rolled her eyes. "Because I know! I told you that. She doesn't know she's going there, but that's where she'll stop running."
Weiss paused for a moment, before nodding decisively. "Alright Lily. Thank you. Why don't you go back to your family? I'll take care of these two, ok?"
"I don't know if I can. It hurts too much!" Lily said, wincing as she clutched her arms around her chest.
She eeped as Weiss pulled her into a gentle hug, cooing softly. "I'm calm. See, right now, I'm calm. Just listen to me, ok?"
Lily returned the hug gently, sighing softly as she held onto Weiss' midsection. "You're still worried about Ruby."
"Yes, I am. But that's ok to be, because she matters to me. But I'm not angry. I'm going to find her, thanks to all your help. And we'll be ok."
Lily squeezed Weiss tightly, letting go of her and stepping back. "Thank you Miss Weiss. I feel a little better."
Weiss smiled softly at her, before jerking her head to the side. "Run along, ok? I'll take care of these two."
"Ok!" Lily nodded, before she bolted off with the speed only a child could seem to find.
Weiss took a deep breath before narrowing her eyes. She drew Myrtenaster, climbing gracefully to her feet. She turned to face the still bickering women, taking note of how Yang was towering over Blake with flames flickering about her hair, how Blake's ears were flat against her skull but the fur on them was sticking up.
Weiss didn't bother to warn them. A quick flick of her wrist and the two women found themselves quite literally bound by runes, as flicking white glyphs wrapped themselves around both their hands and feet, pulling them away from one another with force. The flames in Yang's hair died out of pure shock as she gaped at the fuming Weiss stomping between the two of them, glaring at them both.
"Instead of sitting here and fighting over the past, we should focus on finding and stopping Ruby before she does something stupid. Especially since the two of you were hurting Lily with your idiotic fight!"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Yang snarled, trying to break her way out of the glyphs wrapped around her.
Weiss rounded on Yang, glaring at her. "Lily has a Semblance. She's an empath! She feels what the people around her feel!"
"…what? How is that…how is that possible?" Blake gasped.
Weiss rolled her eyes. "It explains how she knows what you're feeling, doesn't it? You told us she does that all the time. Well, while you two were busy getting in each other's faces, she was in pain, thanks to you. She begged me to stop you because it hurt!"
"Why didn't she tell me?" Blake asked, aghast.
"How do you expect a child to explain that to you? And she tried to get your attention, but you were too busy fighting with Yang to listen!"
"Ok, fine, she's an empath, how does that help us find Ruby?" Yang demanded, still frustrated that she couldn't escape Weiss' bonds.
"She also seemed to know where Ruby was going. Clairvoyance maybe, who knows. Semblance's have to evolve over time, you know this. Clearly she has a lot of work ahead with one as powerful as that, but she's a child. She gave us what we need to find Ruby, and if you're right about her Blake, we have to find her now. Not after you two are done with your fight, now. So shut up and let's go find our leader."
Blake blinked as the glyphs released her. She glanced over to see Yang rubbing her wrists as they disappeared off of her body as well. Yang's eyes closed and she took a deep breath, before she opened them again, the crimson that had burned across them fading back into lilac.
"She's right. Let's…let's find Ruby and deal with that later," Yang said as she met Blake's eyes for a split second, before looking away.
"Y-yeah. Ok," Blake managed to stutter out.
"Lily said Ruby was going to the place Ruby found her…so, the building that collapsed, right? Do you remember where it is?" Weiss asked, turning to Blake.
"Yes. But, are we sure she's right?"
Weiss shrugged. "We don't have a better option."
"…you are surprisingly…umm…" Blake trailed off as she spoke.
"Not psychotic?" Weiss added with an arched eyebrow. Blake flushed in embarrassment. "I can feel it, in the back of my mind. It's there. It's not going away. But right now, all I want is to make sure Ruby is safe. I need help. Yang needs help. She needs help. We can get it here, but we have to be together to get it, right?"
"…I probably need help too," Blake sighed as her shoulders slumped.
"Then let's find her before something happens," Yang said.
Weiss nodded. "Lead on, Blake."
Ruby was running but she didn't know where. She didn't care. She needed to get away, needed to find air. She couldn't breathe, all she could feel was this pressure on her chest, this constant pounding in her skull that wouldn't let her think. Lily's face, Lily's voice, this child whose life she had ruined. Ruby didn't even know where she was running to, or what she'd run through. Years of running had made her an expert at it, her semblance making her nothing but a blur through streets long empty of the influence of civilization.
She'd left the grounds of the project behind in moments, found herself blurring through city streets that hadn't seen the steps of anything but animals and Grimm in years. Burned out husks of broken skyscrapers, dilapidated houses and apartments with moss growing out of the cracks in the streets before them. Dark, dreary remains of what was once a bustling city, nothing but shells of what they once were.
She passed shops with shattered windows, office buildings where at a quick glance she could see desks overturned and computers lying broken in pieces on the floor. Cars overturned in pileups in the center of the street, half-finished construction projects in ruins every few blocks. Years later, it was silent, still, only the traces of wind rustling through destruction left. It was nothing like what she'd left behind eight years ago…back then it was all fire and smoke, explosions and screams. Now it was a silent tomb. Nothing left of the bodies of the people who died in the city, who tried to run but were cut down by traitors and Grimm. The people Ruby had failed to save.
She had stopped paying attention to where she was going, and she stumbled over something on the ground. Losing balance at her speed meant she went flying, skidding across the ground, ripping the brown cloak she wore off her shoulders as cracked pavement scraped across her side, ripping at her clothes and skin. She cried out in pain for a moment, before silencing herself as she slid to a stop. She deserved that fall anyways. She took a deep breath, panting slightly as she lay sprawled on her side. She let her head fall to the pavement, ignoring the twinge of pain in her neck.
She didn't bother opening her eyes. What did it matter, anymore? What did any of it matter? If she opened her eyes, all she would see was the grim specter of death before her, nothing but what little was left in a city of ruins and catastrophe. This was the result of her failures…in Vale, and in Atlas. Eight years in Vacuo didn't make up for the lives lost, the people who died. There was no justice to be had, no vengeance to be taken because Cinder was already dead. Because all of her people, her soldiers, they had died too, fighting for a cause that was nothing but hate and rage and death.
Ruby clambered to her feet, ignoring the searing pain in her side. She glanced down and saw the raw red flesh, ripped open by her skid across the pavement, and willed her Aura not to heal it. She'd accept it as another consequence of what she'd done, what she'd failed to do. She needed to take her punishment, her suffering to make up for the suffering she had caused others. A glance around told her she had no idea where she was, but it didn't matter. She'd just go until she found what she needed to find, until she could walk no more. Picking a direction, any direction not back towards the project, she began limping along.
It felt like hours, before she finally had run out of energy. Gasping, she fell to her knees, bent nearly in half as she tried to hold back the bile building up in her throat from the heat and sweat covering her. She brushed her damp, limp hair out of her eyes and tried to get her breathing under control. Lifting her head up, she blinked rapidly as she realized where she was kneeling.
A nearly silent chuckle escaped her, before she began laughing maniacally as tears poured out of her eyes. Oh Dust the sweet, sweet irony. She could see the remnants of the collapsed building before her, the street sign burned into her memory nearly bent in half just a few feet away. Above her towered a massive edifice of glass and steel, and when she looked up to the sky through her desperate laughter she could see the marks of Crescent Rose still carved into the concrete walls of the skyscraper above her. She had found the place of her failure, the place she had lost herself and everything she stood for for the final time.
It had to be fate, or destiny. Something she'd never believed in before, but this was too coincidental to be ignored. Here she was, kneeling before the graves of the last two people she had failed. She hadn't even realized it, but her left hand was already holding the brilliant silver knife, the steel dull in the darkness of the cloudy skies above. She stared at it, the desire welling up within her to suffer, to pay for her transgressions. She was a monster, a killer, a murderer. And she knew what to do to murderers.
She took off her jacket, her tunic below it, removed the undershirt she wore beneath that. Stripped off every bit of clothing between the knife and her skin, wanting nothing to get between the blade and her. Glancing down at the innumerable scars littering her torso, the twin angry red lines straight down her front, letting her right hand slowly trickle down them and allowing herself to trace the scar tissue covering her.
With another brush of her hair behind her ear, she glanced up to see the collapsed building before her once more. This would be her penance for what she did to Lily, for what she did to Yang, to Blake, to Weiss. To everyone she loved, who she had made suffer over and over, she'd pay for what she had done. And finally she'd be out of their hair. They said they wanted her around, that they needed her, but they were just deluded. Truth was, they'd be so much better without her around, they'd be so much happier. She'd hurt Yang with what she had yelled at her. Yang didn't deserve that.
And Weiss, she'd somehow screwed Weiss up and made her mind break somehow. All because she'd been around, because she'd wormed her way into Weiss' heart somehow and then broke it. Broken her. Ruined Blake's life by making her hunt her down. Blake lost out on so much because she'd been busy chasing Ruby, she knew that. So they'd be happier without her.
Sometimes Ruby wondered if there was anything past death, if she'd see her mom again, but she knew she didn't deserve to see her mom, or her dad, or her uncle again. She hoped she wouldn't, because then she'd just ruin whatever happiness they may have found together again. Everyone would be better off if she simply ceased to exist, ceased to be a factor in this world. Ruby Rose should be forgotten, by everyone, and they would. Substitute people didn't matter. And maybe if she left Remnant, maybe she'd finally stop that pain in her chest, maybe she wouldn't be so tired every second of every day. Maybe, just maybe…maybe she'd just have the peace she craved.
Holding the knife in front of her with both hands, aimed at her chest, Ruby squeezed teary eyes shut. She took a deep breath and whispered one final thing, one final apology for everything she'd ever done. "I'm sorry." Ruby pulled the knife in, thrusting with all the force she could muster towards her chest.