Oscar wakes first the next morning to dim grey light shining through the window, the sky still overcast but no longer dumping rain. Ruby was still laying on him, using his stomach as a pillow with the rest of her draped over his legs. She looks peaceful, an expression he hasn't seen from her in so long. He isn't sure he's ever actually seen her look completely at ease, actually.

He brushes her hair out of her face, it's longer than she used to wear it, he notes, with choppy wild ends that look as if she just uses a blade to cut it.

She's not a heavy sleeper anymore, and that small touch is enough to rouse her even if she doesn't open her eyes quite yet. The slight tension her body took, the way she always held herself, tells him she's awake.

"Ruby," He whispers. She ignores him completely. With his fingers still touching the ends of her hair, he tugs on it lightly. "Ruby," He repeats, biting back a grin at the grousing and grumbling that earned him.

She turned her head to hide her face against his stomach.

"Go 'way." She mutters, this is the best sleep she's gotten in weeks, she doesn't want it to end.

"I can't do that, you're kind of on me. Also I can't feel my legs." He can't hold back a laugh then, which only makes her grumble more because of the movement of it.

She shifts, and scoots up a little further so she's laying on his chest instead, legs completely tangled in the sheets. "There, better? When I'm actually awake, I'm gonna make you stop being annoying 'cause you're still doing it."

"Looking forward to it," Oscar sighs, pins and needles running through his legs now that she wasn't laying on them.

Ruby dozes, trying to ignore all the concerns that flooded her every time she's conscious enough to actually think.

She's missing training, she hadn't told anyone she was going out and Raven will be angry.

Then there's Oscar, she doesn't know what she's doing with him here. Moreover, what he told her about his aunt and the farm haunted her. Somewhere in the time spent between awake and asleep she decided she would have to figure it out somehow, she needed to know for sure whether she or the tribe was responsible for that. The guilt that was held back by alcohol last night no longer has such a barrier.

Eventually those anxieties bleed in and consume any ability to stay still or try to sleep. She kicks away the sheets and pulls herself out of bed. Oscar had stayed away the whole time, and sits up once Ruby's off of him.

"Let's get out of here," Ruby says, already gathering her stuff because moving around distracts her just the tiniest bit from all that's running through her head. Between the time they head out and the time the town is out of sight again, there must have been fifty different times where she almost asks him, almost demands he take her to his old home so she can see for herself, so she can know if this dread in her stomach is warranted.

She doesn't, because every time it almost slips out of her mouth something in her steals away her voice, or makes her jaw clench.

She doesn't want to think about it, she wants this feeling to go away, a burning and sickening feeling altogether so similar and so different than the normal terrible feeling that she can never get to go away completely. Normally, there is no target, it's a resentment of the world and every wrong in it. Now it's wholly directed at herself.

She does what she always does when she wants to not think about it, she seeks out Oscar. He isn't expecting it even though he should by now. As they walk through the wilds, she finds the perfect moment and attacks. She gets him with his back against a tree, but standing she has to drag him down enough to meet his lips. He is far too cooperative in that pursuit, yet uses the distraction of the kiss to free himself and dodge away. With a little bit of speed and effort, he gets his arms around her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides. She barely even tries to kick him, so he knows the game hasn't fully begun yet.

"Thought you said you'd make me stop being annoying," He teases, ducking his head to press a kiss to her neck, knowing it'd bother her that he was being gentle. That was enough to properly bring the fight out in her as she hooked one foot behind his ankle and tripped him.

This is all muscle memory now, a routine that never ceased to be both confusing and fun. He's kept count of the number of times he's ended up laying with his back on the ground and her on top of him. He adds today to that count as she pushes up his shirt and bites exposed skin. He hisses but doesn't remember to try to fight in that moment, she doesn't seem to mind.

There are a handful of moments, in Ruby's life, where she has felt the world shift under her, changes all so terrible. She has no control over any of those moments.

She has no control over the portal that rips its way into thin air, or that Raven appears through it, just a few feet away from them. She lifts her head and silver eyes meet red ones, terrifyingly cold, calm, and observant.

Ruby scrambles away from Oscar, like a child caught doing something they shouldn't.

Oscar only vaguely recognizes Raven at first, it takes him a moment to realize who this person is.

Raven recognizes Oscar in an instant, and suddenly her eyes are not nearly as cold or calm, in fact there is quite literally the glow of fire in them.

She looks back to Ruby with an expression that demands explanation.

"I- I.. I can-" Ruby can't find words, the whiplash of this all, the adrenaline that's making her heart race in eight different ways steals words from her. She pulls herself to her feet, shrinking in on herself.

Oscar stands as well, watching, worried.

"I told you that what you do is your business, but this?" Raven gestures to both of them. "What are you thinking?"

"I don't know," And it's the truth, in many ways, there aren't enough words in existence or time in a life to explain the things she's thought that brought her to this point.

"Of all things you could be doing, you're screwing around with Ozpin?"

In an instant there's a much more familiar furious look in Ruby's eyes, she's poised for a fight, this is a standoff. "That's not his name,"

Oscar is so used to it, that it hardly fazed him. People who knew what Oz is, and knew about him, would only ever see him as a vessel for Oz and see his actions as those of Oz no matter what he did. He could be his own person, even if others refused to see him as such.

"What?" Raven asks, stance matching Ruby's then.

"That's not his name, that's not who he is," And the fire in Raven's eyes seems to flare at Ruby's words.

Raven laughs with no humor in it. "You're really that delusional huh? That's okay, he's good at fooling people, making them do what he wants."

"I'm not delusional!" Ruby growls.

"Like I said, it's okay, child," Raven has an almost soothing tone, standing ready for a fight but also like she's talking Ruby down. "We've all been tricked by him before, haven't we? Of course he wants to keep you close, he thinks those eyes of yours are the answer."

"I- what?" She's a touch less furious, and a little more curious.

"Isn't it obvious? People don't normally get into Beacon two years early, you know. It's to keep your power close, it always is, to build you up young with these stupid- this sick hero complex, make you think you can save the world then send you to your death. Rinse and repeat. Happened to Summer, and you're letting it happen to you." Raven's voice curls strangely around the name, like it's painful for her to say. Ruby freezes at her mother's being mentioned like that.

She knows Raven is wrong, somewhat, at least. She knows that no one knows what happened to her mother, not entirely. She thinks. It's what she's been told. She blinks, staring not at Raven, but past her. There's no rebuttal she can make.

The tension in the air snaps. Raven has been standing ready to attack, but her target isn't Ruby. Oscar isn't ready, isn't prepared to have a sword swung at him with every intention to kill.

Ruby doesn't think, she acts. She's between Oscar and Raven before the hit can connect, blocking it with her scythe, protecting him.

"I don't care!" She shouts, arm straining against the blow. "He's not Ozpin, he's not using me. He's not the one that hurt you."

'I'm using him.' Ruby wants to say. She wants to tell Raven that she's got it all backwards, but she doesn't.

A flash of rage, then something else, then something nearing sadness crosses Raven's face as she stares at Ruby. She lowers her sword, and takes a step back.

She doesn't blink, she demands that eye contact. "Make up your mind then, and don't come back until you do," Raven turns, her back to both of them, unconcerned with any potential attack. Then she is a bird, and then she is off.

They are left with nothing but silence and each other.

Oscar breaks the silence first, reaching out to her. "Ruby…"

That's all it takes to snap Ruby out of the trance she was in, and into some awful panic. She startles when he touches her shoulder, jumping away.

"I can't- I'm sorry, I just, can't." She doesn't explain, she doesn't even really know what she's saying.

She's running again. Full circle it seems, as she runs and runs well past when her lungs burn, until her body forces her to stop, dry heaving, coughing.

She's so familiar with these lands now, it's impossible to get lost even when she wants to.

She doesn't stop moving, but she changes course and changes pace.

She's back at Glass Lake, a place that now holds so many memories.

She stays there for two days, she doesn't eat, she doesn't seek shelter when it rains.

She just stays there.

She doesn't know why.

That's a lie.

She does know why.

Because she knows how stories are supposed to go.

Because she's strangled her romantic side but it's a stubborn thing that refuses to die.

It's a lost cause, and a frivolous hope, but she hopes still that he might find her here.

He never shows up.

Cold, wet, and shaking, she seeks the tribe again.

She passes everyone, ignores them all, finds Raven who is thankfully alone.

Raven watches her approach, expression stoic. "So you've returned."

Ruby sinks to her knees, in part because the world feels like it's tilting, and in part a gesture to ask forgiveness.

"I have- or I will. I have one last thing, to make peace with before I can return. Can I?"

Raven considers the request before nodding. "Stand up, you look ridiculous like that."

Ruby pulls herself up, more able to now that she knows she has somewhere to return to, she hasn't ruined everything yet.

A thought creeps into her mind, a question, one that's passed her by before when she was less brave or less broken, unable to as.

"Can I ask you another question?"

"I'm listening," Raven waits, watching Ruby try and form the words.

"Why did you leave?" Again such a vague question, but one she understands. It's a question that's been posed to her before, by her daughter, by her husband, by her brother. There isn't an answer she could give that any of them would understand.

This time an answer is something she can give, because the girl standing before her is so very painfully much like Summer, yet at the same time is everything she wasn't.

"Because there's darkness, in every corner of Remnant. Getting rid of one evil doesn't get rid of them all." They had such a similar rage inside of themselves, at how unfair it all is. "They wanted to fight off every bad thing, and throw away their lives away for a cause that will fix nothing." She sounds so angry for a moment, then looks away.

Then a crack, just the tiniest one in Raven's facade, the smallest hint of weakness and the biggest secret uttered all at once.

"I wasn't good enough for them, no matter how much they wanted to believe I could be. I couldn't be what they thought they could make me. I couldn't be happy."