They're surviving, at least, and that's all Ruby can hope for.
She's not as good as Pyrrha – nobody ever was – but she's good enough to keep things running. The six of them, one with no combat training, can manage things, taking down the worst of the robots and gradually eroding the White Fang leadership. As long as the woman who killed Pyrrha, or whoever stole the Source, doesn't come back, and the new villains that arise are still easy to deal with, they'll survive.
It feels like they're just staying afloat and waiting to die. But at least they're afloat for the time being.
That's what Ruby tells the team, anyway. If she stays optimistic, they'll have a bit of hope, and they won't give up the way Yang did.
Ruby doesn't like admitting that Yang gave up, either, but it's true enough. Yang's powers would be more than enough to compensate for the loss of the arm, even if they didn't have the technology to build a prosthetic, but she doesn't patrol. Having her as mission control, the one on the other end of the earpiece, feels wrong. Yang keeps saying that it's just temporary. Once she's back in fighting shape, she'll go back into the field, but Ruby sees her flinch away from little things, like kitchen knives or old shell casings.
Ruby doesn't know what to do, and it scares her. Pyrrha is gone. Qrow and Ozpin, when he breaks through, give advice but in the end follow her orders, because she's The Huntress. She's the greatest hero Remnant has, but she feels like a scared little girl who's been thrown into the world too suddenly. If she were a good hero, she could have been quicker and saved Penny, or not trusted Pyrrha to deal with the woman in red on her own and saved her. If she were a good hero, then people wouldn't be dead because of her.
They'll survive, because they have to. They're the only people keeping the last remnants of the city from collapsing. That's what they've always been.
Ruby picks up her soldering iron again and continues. Pyrrha's red sash and a few fragments of her armor survived, which Ruby technically inherited as her replacement, but Pyrrha's team deserves to have her with them in spirit. They didn't fail her the way Ruby did. Ruby offered to add the metal to their weapons, and brushed them away when they said it was so generous of her. It's not generous. Ruby doesn't deserve that.
…
Weiss checks the news almost religiously, hoping for news of the heroes each time. Her brief time with them feels almost like a fever dream, or some idle fantasy.
There's a headline about a new hero potentially showing up; the photo below it is blurry and dark, but still instantly recognizable as Ruby. Weiss sighs and saves the article. She doesn't want to read it, but she'll come back to the photo.
Ruby was the first person who told Weiss she could leave. The first person who told Weiss she could fight. The first person who helped Weiss become whatever she wanted to be. And now Weiss is back with her family, in Atlas, which is desperately trying to downplay the impact of Vale's takeover, as if nothing has changed.
Things have changed far more than even Weiss will admit. She kept the sword; it's stowed carefully in her closet, tucked between coats she never wears. Her fingers frost over when she's sad; windstorms rush through the house when she gets angry. Her father just ignores it, most of the time, and then mutters angrily about how Winter never had this much trouble with control.
Control. That's new. Weiss spent a matter of weeks with the heroes, but that was enough. She stopped wanting to control her powers, because too much control meant she wouldn't be protected from the next bullet. Back in her family's house, everything is delicate and valuable and all her powers do is destroy.
The last change is one she still doesn't like to admit. She spent her whole life convinced that Atlas was right. Maybe their methods were a little extreme, but they brought peace and security to people under their control. Even the downfall of Vale didn't take Atlas with it, nor did the sanctions following the revelation that hacked Atlesian mechs played a role in the city's partial destruction. But everything is different. Weiss has heard enough from the heroes, enough stories of nearly being jailed following the takedown of a villain. She was nearly killed by a rogue Titan mech, and has spent enough nights in dark alleys with a Faunus guarding her back to know that many of them are trustworthy. Weiss still supports Atlas, but there's a little crack of doubt, and that's enough.
Weiss listens to the protesters, when not long ago she would have dismissed them as crazy or selfish or, if she were feeling charitable, as tragically misguided. She listens, and what she hears unbalances her whole worldview. Voter suppression, freedom of speech, right to privacy.
Weiss isn't sure who to believe. Atlas, her home, and the heroes, her friends, are permanently at odds, and she has to pick a side eventually. She asks Klein who he believes in, and he shrugs and says that he believes in the people who pay his wages, and in the Lord, which isn't all that helpful to Weiss.
Frost spreads across her windowpanes when she's near them, in the wake of each footstep. Weiss gets used to the cold permeating her home and her heart quickly. She's never been warm.
…
Yang wants to get up and leave their operations room, to walk back into the fight, to smile the way she used to and hurl handfuls of fire into the next robots. She wants things to go back to normal.
She tries, too, she tries. She beats up punching bags with her one arm, learns to fight with her legs so she has more limbs in the fight. Each night, she pulls on her jacket and slides the earpiece into one ear, but when she gets to the gauntlets she always stops.
Each time, there are the memories. The sharp glint of light in the darkness, the phantom pain, the pain and the fear in Blake's voice mixing with her own until she can't breathe. Each time, she pulls herself away and sits down to track the heroes and villains on maps that shift and bend under her fingers. She doesn't like mission control, the delicate balance of who can take down a robot alone and who needs backup, which sector takes priority depending on police presence. She wants the simplicity of something in front of her to kill, the solid pavement under her feet, and the fire.
The fire is gone. Taiyang says that it's normal enough to lose power after a traumatic event, as they're tied to emotion. He doesn't mention whether it's temporary. Yang knows the answer each time he carefully evades her question.
Once in a while, Nora's on the other side of the room, scanning newsfeeds for any sign of activity. They don't talk, unless it's about strategy, because neither of them have anything to say, and neither of them know how to deal with the one constant in their lives vanishing.