Author's Note: A little character study for one of me and Lea's fic trades, the majority of which was written before *the* episode, but I went back in a few days ago and reworked it to actually fit with canon. The prompt I was given was more or less "Flowery character study of Nora before her and Ren eventually talk" and uh. I think I delivered? I don't usually post prose-y stories here, OCPAP gets a bit flowery sometimes but not nearly to this extent. As with many of our fic trades, this was written very late on a restless night on a kindle, so if there are any glaring mistakes, I apologize! This was also, as with all late night fics, not edited at all lmao
Author's Note 2: Turns out has a stick up it's butt and you can't write MUSICAL LYRICS into your fic? bc of... copyright?? 1st of all... .. you knkw what fair use is, right? bc you're... a fanfiction... site... and 2nd. Do you... do you think they can HEAR the song through my fic? Really? *sigh* at risk of my account being suspended, I changed this fic a little. Before the story, there was originally an excerpt from Strong, by Amaranthe, but since fair use is apparently somehow dead on a FANFICTION WEBSITE, I took it out. The title is, however, taken from the song so it would be hard to get the title without knowing the lyrics so... would sure be a shame if someone left the exact excerpt that was originally beneath this note in the reviews... o o p s i e s.
The buzzing. Why is it so loud?
She's strong, and should lack all fear, but it's dark and her ears are ringing.
Her head hurts. Her chest hurts. Her arms hurt.
Her arms used to hurt a lot. This is different. Why is it different? She doesn't know. She only knows that it's dark, and for the first time in about thirteen years, she is uncomfortably alone with her thoughts.
She's been comfortably alone with her thoughts for a few years now; she had the option to tell him about her thoughts and make them more than thoughts, but she didn't because once they weren't just thoughts anymore, she couldn't take them back.
Even worse, she couldn't continue to hide them, to shove them deep into a heart shaped box and lock it with a trauma-rusted key, and hope the lock was strong enough that the thoughts wouldn't get past the lump in her throat. She'd swallow some thoughts, bury them beneath a thousand tear stained confessions ripped out of college ruled notebooks. She'd tentatively open up the box when everyone had left her alone at night in favor of sleeping, and she'd try so hard to poke holes in the little college ruled paper boats.
It would never work. They'd bob back up, and she'd sigh, and she'd force them down again. Bury. Box. Boat. Bob. Repeat.
She didn't know exactly when she'd stopped being able to tell him everything. She wondered if there was a specific moment, but really, it was probably a slow crescendo building up since the moment he made the considerate decision to become the only person to ever give a shit about her.
But even then, even when she was alone with her heart shaped box, she still had him. Always around; sometimes distant, but always close. She couldn't entirely latch onto him, but she had a hand to hold when the lights went out and a person to ground her when her brain sent her flying in a bad way. She was comfortably alone.
But then somewhere along the line, he stopped being sometimes distant and started being usually distant, and "a hand to hold" suddenly became "a person to walk with".
She was a little anxious alone instead of entirely comfortable, because around the same time she had started to tell herself that the only definite way to make sure he stayed being the only person to care about her, was to stay comfortably alone with her thoughts, he'd begun drifting and she didn't really know where he was going.
She didn't think he knew, either.
But he was there, and she was content with that.
And then usually distant became always distant, and she didn't know if that was his fault or hers.
Her arms hurt. Why did they feel like this? She felt… pain. Burning. Not like when she was younger. Her arms hurt a lot when they were younger. Angry fingerprint shaped bruises from assholes who would hit a child for the simple accident of their existence, mirroring the scuff marks and scars on a seven year old's heart shaped box.
...Her heart didn't hurt like this when they were younger.
When they were younger, all she knew was that she loved him. He taught her how to read. She taught him how the best way to fight someone bigger was to try and aim for their stomach.
As they got older, their roles began to blur with the lines of what a friendship was and then she suddenly knew less than she did when she was seven. When she was seven, she loved him.
By the time she was seventeen, she loved him and he was her best friend and she also caught herself wanting to stop him from drifting away and wondering what it would feel like to close the distance with a kiss instead of another tentative "Hey, you okay?" When she was eighteen, he held her hand on his own and she thought he was finally coming back and things could be comfortably lonely again at the very least.
And then she was nineteen. She didn't know what she did wrong. What did she do wrong? It must have been something. He was… angry. All the time. Something inside of him was burning, like what her arms and neck felt like right now, maybe.
And even though he was keeping her in the dark, and she suspected he was just as lost as she was, she didn't think the fire in him was going to lead him back to comfortable loneliness. It wasn't the kind of fire that lit a path; it was the kind of fire a village was alight with when it was burning to the ground, falling to ashes around an orphan from what was now nowhere, and an abandoned bastard who may as well have been from nowhere, too.
She thought he knew better than this. Better than getting lost. She thought he knew how to find a way out, but he was getting lost and she was finding it so much harder to follow him. She tried to teach him to find his way back but… she thinks she's missed her chance.
She taught him how to steal (he didn't like it, but morals and principles are for people with full stomachs and warm beds), how to find the least rotten food, how to fight.
He taught her how to read. How to spot constellations. How not stepping on cracks in the pavement was a game.
Nowadays, it seemed like she was always pushing him to seek happiness, and he was always pulling her towards prioritizing the mission no matter what.
You'd never know nowadays that while she had taught him to survive, he had taught her something even more valuable.
He taught her how to live.
She thinks she's missed every chance.
Because the last thing she said to him was "I actually believe we can do this" or something to that effect- she's never had a great memory- but she remembers the look on his face and she remembers not being able to tell if he was angry or sad or scared or more lost.
But now everything is dark, and she's uncomfortably alone, and her body feels like it's on fire. And she wonders if she's missed every chance forever, because she doesn't know what dying feels like, but maybe this is it, because she feels like she's been hit by a truck, at the very least.
She tries to move, her line of reasoning being that dead people can't move, so if she can move, she's not dead. It hurts. A lot.
She was usually so infallible, she could get knocked down but she was up so fast.
If she couldn't get up then what was she good for?
She doesn't move much but it's enough that she suddenly finds herself in an oblivion, and now she isn't even alone with her thoughts.
She's just alone.
And then she isn't.
She doesn't really know what's happening, but she, Pyrrha and Penny didn't establish a union and send selfies to people captioned "Ginger Squad" for her to sit her like a potato and watch her fellow ginger… do whatever she was doing.
Nora remembered very little of the event, given she may or may not have been a little high off of painkillers.
She did know she had also been drunk on pain, crashing onto her in waves and drowning her.
She could hardly move. She couldn't fix things with Ren. She didn't even know if she was even going to be able to be strong and hit stuff.
But damn it, she could breathe. She could keep her head above the water. And that was enough in that moment. It was enough to pull Penny back from whatever edge she was about to jump off of, at least.
And suddenly it occurs to her that she doesn't need to hit stuff. She doesn't need to fix everything. She doesn't have to know what to do, not right now.
She was breathing, and she was strong.
She didn't have to prove that she was strong with anything but her existence.
She didn't need to fight to be worthy of the title, she just was worthy of the title. Even when she was at her weakest, at a breaking point, she was strong.
She wasn't strong because she'd reached a breaking point, she was strong because she knew she'd get past it. She'd heal, and do more than breathe, and soon she'd be even stronger.
She was very happy with this grand revelation, and then she saw Weiss run in and now she's in oblivion again.
She blinks and it seems like it's a few hours later, and Jaune and Ren are running into the room, and her head is above water and Ren's no longer on fire.
And then they're alone, and he almost sounds like he's about to cry and her heart and eyes and head are burning but she doesn't much care.
She lashes out, because she's kept all of these thoughts and feelings in her head and her heart for years, and he's been kind of an asshole lately, and she's frankly quite tired of it.
And he... admits that he's been kind of an asshole lately.
Not in as many words, but still. It's nice. He's grown. Even though the anger and the fear made for a foggy night, he still found the path back.
She doesn't know everything, doesn't know quite what to say when Ren starts talking- Ren, talking! Imagine that- she would have done some kind of happy dance, some excited stimming, if moving didn't feel like flames licking her veins, because he's talking, but she was mentally and physically tired, and her feelings and throat feel raw, so she just sat there- but she does know that whatever it is, they're gonna figure out how to deal with it.
She isn't ready, even though he's telling her exactly what she's wanted to let out of her heart shaped box, but that's okay. She will be, eventually, and when that happens, he'll be ready, too. She needs to find the rest of her, to sort through and organize the other trinkets and notes in her heart shaped box. She'd spent so long trying to push down that one thing, that the rest of her collection of qualities and fears and likes had stepped aside, always there but never in the spotlight.
And she knows that they're going to come out of it, and just as they've come out of everything else, they'll keep each other safe, and as always, she will stay strong.
And if she can't stay strong all the time, for whatever reason, well. One day, she'll get there again.