"Alright, bye Yang!" Ruby said as she gave her sister a hug. "I'll see you in a few days."
"I'll miss you so much!" Yang said as she squeezed Ruby tighter, eliciting a wheeze as Ruby had the breath constricted from her lungs.
"I think you should let go now." Blake said as she turned another page in her book as she waited by the door.
"Yes, please refrain from killing our leader. School isn't over yet." Weiss said from her bunk where she sat reclined with her Dust Mechanics text book.
"Don't you mean girlfriend?" Yang teased, but released Ruby nonetheless.
"That too." Weiss said, her tone just as serious as Blake's while she too turned a page in her book.
"Wow, you make it sound like you don't care." Yang continued slyly. "Maybe you really don't like Ruby that much."
Ruby's face fell slightly at her sisters words as she watched the conversation unfold. Weiss noticed this with a quick glance and sighed at Ruby's habit to take her sister seriously at almost every turn.
"No, I quite enjoy having your sister as my girlfriend." Weiss responded, keeping her voice as level as possible to avoid yet another rather personal embrace with Ruby in front of the rest of her team. "I just find its much easier to deal with you when I don't give any reaction. You get bored far too easily."
"She's right you know. You should work on your attention span." Blake spoke up as she closed her book on her bookmark. "Come on, or we'll be late for the airship."
"Oh, this isn't over!" Yang laughed threateningly as she walked out of the room behind her partner.
"I think it is." Weiss said loudly so her voice would travel around the corner.
"Bye Yang!" Ruby called, obviously pretending her girlfriend and sister had parted on friendly terms.
"See ya Ruby!" Yang called back. "Oh, and if I somehow find out you two had too much fun, someone's gonna get hurt real bad!"
"Don't worry, we'll only have fun some of the time!" Ruby called back.
Weiss sighed at Ruby's tendency to miss the double entendres that Yang used in every other sentence. Then she smiled at an idea that popped into her head and called out to Yang. "Yeah, what she said!"
Loud footsteps were heard stomping back down the hall and Yang rounded the corner with eyes red as the blood coursing through them.
"What did you just say?" She growled at Weiss who simply smirked in response.
The quiet in the room was very still for a few long moments before Weiss casually pressed her scroll to wake it up.
"I can't quite remember the exact wording…" Weiss smiled as she tapped her finger along the edge of the scroll feigning thoughtfulness. "Was it something like three minutes?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Yang growled, her initial surge of anger already dissipating and her eyes growing lighter as they moved back to their normal color.
"Well the airship docks are a ten minute walk away." Weiss smiled even larger as the number in the top corner of her scroll's screen incremented. "You now have two minutes to get there before its supposed to depart."
Yang's face went pale and her eyes snapped wide as she realized she'd made a big mistake. Her luggage was with Blake who was probably already boarding and here she was, going to miss the flight.
"What am I going to do?" She almost yelled as she turned between the door and the window, as if jumping out from the third story window would cut down drastically on her travel time.
"Run." Weiss said quietly.
"This isn't over! And remember my offer." Yang hesitated to see Weiss nod seriously before she bolted out the door as quickly as she'd come.
"Do you think she'll make it?" Ruby asked after a moment as she watched Yang bolt down the path outside the building.
"Normally, no. But all flights were delayed fifteen minutes due to the Vale air show that happened this morning." Weiss said, turning another page in her book. Really she was just occupying her hands with something since it felt awkward to just do nothing.
"So…" Ruby thought hard about the situation before a smile creeped onto her face. "You are one crafty girl."
"I try." Weiss responded with a grin of her own to Ruby.
"Maybe some punishment is in order." Ruby said, leaning over to Weiss's ear seductively.
Weiss's breath hitched in her throat for a second before she remembered who she was dealing with. "So… cookies?"
"Cookies." Ruby responded before giving Weiss a quick peck on her cheek and walking to the closet to grab their jackets.
"You do realize you're playing with fire, right?" Weiss asked as she let out a long shaky breath and slipped her jacket on.
"No I'm not, I'm playing with Weiss!" Ruby said with a straight face, earning her a playful punch in the arm.
"Then just know that one day you'll get freezer burned." Weiss said to a silent Ruby. After a moment of silence, she couldn't wait any longer. "Seriously, nothing?"
"Sorry, that was pretty bad." Ruby laughed lightly as she closed the door behind them.
"Well I'm sorry if I can't use puns like your sister can." Weiss huffed and folded her arms over her chest.
"I don't think anyone can, to be honest." Ruby admitted honestly.
After a moment and a shared glance, they both broke out into giggles that lasted until they had reached the top of the long walkway that descended the Beacon Cliffs into Vale.
"Be careful not to fall, I don't think there's a landing strategy that would work for this height." Weiss commented, looking out and down into the city.
"Awesome!" Ruby laughed.
It was odd to Weiss that she felt a sense of accomplishment at making Ruby laugh, and yet she wasn't as irritated as she'd normally be since she'd actually been serious about her warning. She shrugged it off as being around the girl far too often to be healthy the past few days on top of the stress of the next couple of days.
"Well, lets not just stand here and freeze." Weiss walked off, leaving Ruby to follow her.
They had traveled only a few meters when Ruby piped up nervously.
"Hey, Weiss… I was thinking… since there's nobody around, maybe we could… um…"
"Ruby, calm down. There's no reason to be nervous. At least not yet." Weiss cut in, stopping Ruby's rambling. Ruby took an audible deep breath and continued.
"I thought maybe we could hold hands?" Her question hung in the air for a moment before it sunk into Weiss's head.
"I suppose the chances of us being seen are relatively slim." Weiss nodded her answer to Ruby who quickly linked her fingers through Weiss's. "But we can't walk through Vale like this. Only until the end of this path, have I made myself clear?"
"Crystal." Ruby replied with a peck on Weiss's cheek. Weiss blushed and looked away from Ruby as she continued on down the path. She was currently on the side of the path with the cliff rising to the sky, leaving the view of the horizon past Ruby. She waited for the blush to subside before looking back at the vista.
To say that the landscape was beautiful in the winter would be an understatement. The city looked like a very large Christmas village with snow-topped buildings and vehicles parked along most streets. In the massive park near the cliff, small black and red dots moved around as they used their sleds to slide down the hill. Nearby the hill were several larger squares that were the roofs of food stands that had been erected to provide the sledders with hot chocolate, coffee, and donuts. The trees in the park and the forests beyond the city glistened as the snow and frost covering them reflected the sunlight from the clear day.
Then there was Ruby. Her hood was pulled up over her hair just enough to hide her ears from the cool breeze. Her face's expression looked unconcerned and content as she walked with her hand slowly swaying with Weiss's. Her silver eyes reflected the sun, making them sparkle and giving them a sense of continual motion. Her mouth turned up slightly in the smallest of smiles. And her cheeks maintained a barely there blush as if to show the power of the moment between the two of them. All together, she looked happy. More happy than Weiss remembered ever seeing her.
"Hey, something wrong?" Ruby asked quietly, squeezing her hand just slightly enough to get Weiss's attention.
"Oh, nothing… just admiring the view." Weiss shrugged, looking away.
"By chance, was I part of that view?" Ruby teased, bumping her shoulder into Weiss's.
"That's rhetorical." Weiss answered, ignoring the blush that returned to her face.
Ruby giggled in response. She leaned over and rested her head on Weiss's shoulder as they walked, closing her eyes after getting comfortable. Weiss couldn't help but smile as she supported the gentle weight of Ruby's head. She felt her heart-rate going faster than normal but not as fast as she'd expected considering Ruby had her arm pressed into the side of her chest so she could rest comfortably. Weiss felt an emotion she'd describe as being protective over Ruby, but knew there was more than that beneath the surface. At the moment there was one thing Ruby was doing that not a single person had ever done for her throughout her life. Ruby was trusting her, she was depending on her, and because of that, Ruby was putting her faith in her and silently telling her I'm all yours.
"Love you, Weiss." Ruby whispered so quietly, Weiss didn't know if she'd been imagining it. It was something that was thrown around so easily in conversation, Weiss knew it might not be a big deal since Yang said it to Ruby multiple times a day with Ruby replying in kind. But no matter how much she tried to tell herself it wasn't a big deal, she could never put voice to her feelings.
So Weiss pretended she didn't hear and instead rested her head slightly on Ruby's in an attempt to wordlessly communicate a thanks to the scythe wielder for being there.
They continued to walk down the long path that zigzagged back and forth down the side of the cliff. At long last, they reached the bottom and Weiss reluctantly took a step away from Ruby. Her face was glowing brilliantly by now and she forced herself to ignore it.
"I guess we should go to the penthouse to wait for my father." Weiss said, turning her mind to the business at hand.
"How far is it?" Ruby asked, stretching her arms and looking down the path that led through the park into Vale proper.
"Just outside the park." Weiss answered. "Maybe if we're lucky and see him today we'll be able to go do something before we have to leave for Patch."
"Then its a date!" Ruby declared with conviction.
"Yes, its a date." Weiss smiled as she led the younger girl down the path, walking close enough that their hands brushed each other so often that they might as well have been holding hands to begin with.
It was a surprisingly short walk to the street and the massive hotel in front of them shone with its polished glass exterior. The top floor alone seemed different in that the windows didn't have any obvious breaks where the separate panes of glass normally would connect.
"Onward and upward…" Weiss mumbled as she pulled out her scroll for identification and passed it to the doorman. "She's with me."
"Of course, Miss. Please enjoy your stay." He replied while handing her scroll back and waving them into the fancy lobby.
Weiss ignored the front desk and walked directly to the elevator bank. She pulled a small key from her pocket and inserted it in a slot before pressing the up button and removing the key.
"What was that?" Ruby asked as Weiss pocketed the small piece of metal and stepped into the elevator that had opened.
"The key to the thirtieth floor." Weiss replied stiffly as the door closed behind Ruby.
The elevator rocketed upwards and after only a brief ride, the doors opened to a small hallway that led to a door with a simple black square on it.
Weiss pressed her thumb to the square and the door clicked open.
"Now, we wait." She said, stepping into the brightly lit room and stepping aside for Ruby to properly view the room.
Ruby's jaw dropped immediately.
"You have got to be kidding me…"
"Unfortunately, it's no joke." Weiss replied with a smile. She grabbed Ruby's arm and dragged her into the room, closing the door and reengaging the lock.
