Chapter 5 – To Tend to My Garden of Sunflowers and Roses…

=(✿)=

Ruby Rose, at the Cotta-Arc household.

Jaune's an uncle.

Little Adrian Cotta-Arc is the most well-behaved baby boy I've had the pleasure of holding. He doesn't cry or pull on my hair, doesn't make a fuss and always seems to read the room like some adults can't. Hence why he's making baby noises to distract me whilst Jaune gets the teasing of his life from his eldest sister and sister-in-law. Even though I'm pretending not to hear them, I totally do and it's taking everything in me to not erupt in embarrassment.

"Ah! You look so cute together. Look at this photo. You're the same shade of red!"

"The family ring? I remember getting that. And you just handed it to her on day one? She must have really left an impression on you… and your bed."

"She took you to the nook? That's so romantic! … You cleaned up after yourselves, right?"

"That hotel room of hers doesn't see much use anymore, huh?"

But as the teasing eases and my heart can't take it, I bump his shoulder with mine as we sit together close on their couch. "I think he likes me," I say, pointing with my eyes to Adrian who plays along and reaches for my cheek. I slip into his tiny, plump palm and he laughs.

Jaune lowers his head close to mine and Adrian reaches out to him with his other hand. It looks like we're all having a moment but I'm fairly certain we're all trying to get away from all the teasing from the other couch.

We let them take a photo of us before I make my excuses to see the guest room that Jaune frequents. Narrowly dodging a comment about leaving the door unlocked (as if we aren't in our late twenties and adults) we make it to the silence of the mezzanine's connecting hallway.

"So, this is technically your third house?"

"Kind of," he shrugs. "I helped pay for the cost since buying it off the landlord by themselves was going otherwise leave them destitute. So, I get a key and a room…" He bites down on something inside of his mouth, his eyes telling of the embarrassed dread he seems to frequently bury when he's around his family. "I sometimes get texts not to show up unexpectedly. Even when I'm out on the job and can't possibly show up anyway."

"Ha!" I laugh and he gives me an embarrassed look. "Oh, c'mon. I'm sure you do the same."

"Here? Not a chance. I'd sooner take my dates to my tiny one-bedroom apartment than here or the lake house."

Thinking on it, that's a lot of places for one guy to finance. "How can you afford the upkeep on all three anyway? Even splitting them with your siblings has to cost a lot."

He looks embarrassed. "I'm marginally well-off as far as huntsmen go," he says, lifting a hand to let it glow with his semblance. "I bring someone back from the brink of death once, and people talk. Sometimes they talk too often and now some teams believe that they can't go on a mission without me." He sounds exhausted, and I feel the wear and tear too.

Only a handful of people know about my silver eyes and the old magic coursing through them. But even with such a small circle, I'm often asked to be a part of all of them. This week has been my longest reprieve from that. I'm dreading all the work already. "I know what you mean. I've got a trick up my sleeve, too, and even though only a few people know about it, those that do depend on it."

"Ooh, secrets!" he chimes. "Do tell."

I hesitate. "I'm not sure I can."

He pauses before shrugging it off, much to my relief. "Eh, you'll end up telling me at some point. I'm sure."

I blink at him. "We only have two days left and we're already burning through one of them."

"We could always keep in touch."

After all this? He wants to keep in touch. I'll be honest, so do I, but… "Isn't that basically like looking back? We agreed to leave all this behind," I say, completely certain that the fact that I'm smitten will stay with me for much longer.

"I think we're allowed to break our own rules," he says easily. Then I look up at him and I find that it wasn't easy at all. A speckled blush burns across his face. He wants more, so he laughs to hide the embarrassment. "And if I do it anyway? You gonna cuff me for trying?"

"To the bed, maybe." Oh my god, I can't believe I just said that. I march ahead to hide my face, leaving him stunned whilst I blush furiously till my cheeks hurt.

=(✦)=

Jaune Arc, alone with her.

The guest room is sparse. I try not to keep things here and I insist that my sisters don't need to ask if they can keep a guest. It's not really my room. I don't want it to be. This is their house.

Regardless, I've left small pieces of me here as if I couldn't help but flake myself into these spaces. From my perch on the bed, I watch Ruby open the closet to find my old helmet. It's pristine, largely unused because it was too heavy and aura did better to protect me anyhow.

She rolls it around in her hands like a ball. I want to know what she's thinking.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

She panics. "How did you–!?" Her hands clasp over her mouth.

I squint, trying to parse her ramblings.

"Sorry," she squeaks, hiding behind my helmet. "I forget that you don't know Penny and… I'm used to strangers telling me how different she is every now and then."

"Penny?" I peel apart my foggy memory. I've been only thinking of her but it clicks into place. "The girl who's dating your ex now?"

"Yeah, she's great!" she says without malice. It's clear they were good friends even before she started dating Oscar. "Oh, but she's an android."

"Like the ones they got in Atlas?"

"Yeah! But she's got aura and everything! Thinks like a real girl would. But her dad's got a whole team working on her and since she treats them like aunts and uncles, they've started adding things to her at her behest or, really, just cause they think she might like it!"

I heard rumor that Atlas was experimenting with advanced AI. I guess Ruby talking so casually about this android means it isn't a secret. In fact, with the way she's animatedly talking about Penny, it sounds more like she's talking about a particularly interesting friend reather than an android that happens to be one. It's heartwarming.

"It used to be so cute," she says, plopping onto the bed with me. "I'd come home after a mission and suddenly she's zipping through the air with rockets in her boots, or blasting training drones with a new arsenal. But then she started meeting more and more people and sometimes I'd start haering about how her new voice sings like a full choir, or how fair her skin has gotten. All because she started experimenting with what people liked about each other. Naturally, when she started reshaping herself from her thighs to her chest, we suddenly got too many applicants for the dojo."

She doesn't show it but she was probably troubled by it. Having someone you care about change drastically every time you took your eyes off them can't have been easy.

I've lived in a microcosm of that experience. Being so infrequent in Argus, the people I'd left behind – like May or Saph – would sometimes change drastically with every visit. They were all going through different stages in their lives but it was like I kept stepping into a separate lifetime, where the only bit of familiarity was the faces.

Our hands clasp in quiet solidarity. Ruby's looking at me, and I realize that she knows I can relate. It's likely written all over my face. I'm not trying very hard to hide it, after all.

There are likely many more stories to tell about her time with Penny, but all I'm getting is the cliff-notes. Realistically speaking, there's really no time for the rest of it since my time with her is almost running out.

But then she picks up my comic books that I've got stuffed between the shelves and I tell her a few stories that waste our time and it's the furthest thing from deeply romantic, but is the closest thing to feeling just right.

So, we end up not caring and I ask about Penny anyway. And the morning is eaten away in that tiny guest room, and the sounds of our laughter grows as does my view of her world. Where I can see it for all its nuance and not just glimpsing it from a viewfinder.

=(✿)=

Ruby Rose, buying comic books.

There's a comic book store just a block away. It's by The Campus (a plaza where three schools rub against each other, of which Jaune has attended two) and we're on our way there cause Jaune wants to pick up some new volumes and Terra, apparently, has a love for art books that she's itching to scratch.

She's a curator and an illustrator, by the way. Go figure.

I'm a little nostalgic right now. I hadn't been in a place like this since I was a kid. I started Beacon early so I kept thinking I had to grow up early, too. And though I'd never caught onto the coffee craze like I thought I would, I ended up abandoning some old habits anyway.

"That's kinda sad," Jaune says when I tell him. So, he picks up a set of volumes I'd been staring at and hauls them to the counter.

"Wait, what are you doing?" I ask as I jog after him, careful not to scare little Adrian who's in my arms again.

He winks back at me. "Making up for lost time."

I try to pout and tell him not to but he's already paying for it so I just kiss him on the cheek, promising him payback later. Which I don't know how to deliver but I'll think of something. "Thank you," I whisper.

He kisses my head and ruffles Adrian's head before he wanders off.

"So you're the new beau," the cashier says; a pink-haired little woman. I almost think she's our age until I notice wrinkles in her skin. "I'm glad the little squirt's found happiness again. It really did take an out-of-town gal to do it, huh?"

I almost tell her that I'm not really his new flame or whatever but the thought that she thinks I am is comforting and, if I'm being honest, a little exciting. "Has he always been a dork?" I ask.

"It's in his blood," she says, pointing at Saphron. "His sister used to come here to catch a glimpse of her now-wife. Took her weeks to finally muster the courage to even say hi, but – get this – Terra's been haunting this place for the same reason."

She looks me up and down. If she's known Jaune for long then I'm sure she recognizes the faded Seven Rapids tee I'm wearing. I've tied a knot on the back so it hugs my frame and shows my abs instead of draping over me like I'm a hangar. She's smiling a little too widely.

"Already borrowing his stuff, eh? How long have you known him?"

I bite my lip. Admitting to knowing him for not very long at all almost sounds scandalous. But I don't want to lie and complicate things. "A few days, actually."

"Oh, wow," she laughs. "Must have been an interesting few days."

"They've been… eventful."

"I'll say." She finishes scanning the items and sets them aside in a tote bag we brought along. "I mean, not just anyone gets to wear that ring."

I pause. She wasn't staring at the shirt. I've been wearing his ring again and the implication is so completely damning that any excuses my brain thinks up all drown in the sea evidence. "I, uh, I guess not…"

"Ha!" she cheers, and it isn't to mock. Her gentle eyes, framed old but wise, looks at me with no judgement. "He must really like you."

"I… I like him, too." Even Adrian's giggling at me now.

I want to slink away but Jaune's hand curls around me before I can escape. His eyes are only on me and I can feel the cashier giving us a Cheshire grin. "Guess who's going on a date?" he asks.

I stammer.

He points behind him with a thumb. Terra and Saphron are waving at us from the doorway before they slip away into the afternoon glare. Jaune drops a set of art books at the counter. "So," he continues, "we'll babysit Adrian and head back to the house. Wanna grab something to snack on along the way?"

When we take our things and leave, the Campus is full of students on break. More than a few of them look our way. Maybe it's cause Jaune has marginal fame, maybe he taught some of the aspiring huntsmen here. Regardless of the reason for their curiosity, the keen eyed among them might spot the family ring on my finger and the ring around his neck, and assume that the boy in my arms is our adopted son.

I've no reason to correct the misconception or the passing gossip that clips into my attentive ear. Because, like with the cashier, I find myself settling comfortably into the picture with him.

=(✦)=

Jaune Arc, walking her through the neighborhood.

She wants to name her first daughter Summer.

"After your birth-mom?"

"Yeah. I hardly get to see her myself so I'm sure my kids will see her even less. That and – don't you dare tell anyone I said this – I have trouble remembering which of my six grandparents belong to whom?"

"Six?"

"My birth-dad and other-mom are siblings," she explains. Adrian snores quietly against her shoulder. "They're twins, even!"

We weave through the quiet streets of Argus's eastern sector that hugs cliff edges and sits comfortably in its shadow. Homes are scattered along the tops of those stony hills, the lights from their windows like sentinels of the city in a coastal valley slope. Behind us, the rest of the city cascades until its lights turn tiny and flicker like stars, and the night has turned all around them into so much darkness that it all blends with the shimmering ocean and the tiny lit windows mingle with the speckled sky.

"It's like you live in an empty galaxy," she muses beside me, thinking the same thing. "And it's so quiet here…"

"It has to be," I tell her. "The Atlesian base down by the coast used to make tons of noise at night and it was already noisy enough in the day. So the city decided that we all tuck in and hush when it's late." As if to slap me in the face, someone in a nearby home decides to laugh boisterously, a dog barks in another, and someone's sound system rattles their own windows before a panicked resident lowers the volume with a myriad of curses.

Ruby laughs like the sound of a tittering cartoon. "That so?" she asks, and I'm too embarrassed to respond. "We certainly didn't earlier this week," she continues. "And most certainly not last night."

I give her a scandalized look, "Ruby Rose!" I faux mock. "Not in front of the baby!"

Adrian, perhaps allied with her and primed for my downfall, laughs and slaps a tiny hand to her face.

"I don't think he cares," she teases, walking off.

The homes here are old, remnants of the past century carved sturdy and elegant. Argus used to be filled mostly by noble estates before the lands were bought piece-meal and the manors split in halves and fourths then restructured into individual homes for the masses. The darkness between two such buildings beside us still look like they used to be two halves of a whole before they were refurbished into two separate homes. The aesthetic proved so popular that the whole city decided that they'd all look like fragmentary homes from the last century.

I tell her about it.

"No wonder they all look fancy," she says. "Inside and out. Most cities would build tiny apartments that are only as good as you can decorate it."

"Sounds like you've had a few run-ins with tiny apartments. There a story there?"

"Just one," she chimes giddily. "It wasn't bad. Tiny, with thin walls – Ooh! Like your dorm! – Ah, but it wasn't as chaotic and my own dorm was bigger. But it was fun! Lived next to a couple who could never decide if they were ready to have kids or not, so they just kept getting pets! It was like an adorable little petting zoo and the landlord was younger than I was so he didn't really have any rules. I even took in our very, very old family dog so he could have playmates." The lights in her eyes dim a little but she recovers.

I imagine the mountainous noise that had to have made. In my experience, living in a house with so many siblings could be as loud as any zoo. "I hope you managed to get some sleep somehow." Lord knows I didn't.

"Most days," she shrugs. "It was worth it though." She hugs Adrian a little closer who seems to oblige her by tucking into her shoulder. He's a smart little toddler. "Having been out of Patch for so long, it was nice to have some of the chaos home used to have again. But then they annulled after their pets all passed away, and then it was quiet again and… then I felt like I had to move on too."

"Annulled?" I ask.

"Yeah. It was mutual so it was never going to be a divorce or something like that. One day they just felt like they had to go their separate ways, and didn't want to slow each other down." She has a faraway look to her. "I hope they're happy, wherever they are." She laughs, embarrassed. "Sorry. Didn't mean to be such a downer."

I try to smile but the muscles in my cheeks don't work. I'm listening to her but my eyes lock to the many homes that line the neighborhood, each a fragment of an estate, each divided from their once stately whole into manageable little suburban squares. Each home has made an architectural effort to distinguish themselves somehow so they don't look like they were carved out of their neighbor.

It's all making me think about Pyrrha. I thought I was doing so well, with my mind so densely occupied with Ruby, but it's like a piece of me is riddled with something awful.

"I hope they're happy, too…" I tell her, slow and choked. Everything just feels too… real. Talking about this has walked me back into an old memory.

"Is something wrong?" she asks, and I stare at her. She's sweet and attentive. Like Pyrrha. She'd never hurt me, but sometimes you don't have a choice. Like May said, people are going to get hurt anyway. Love is as much pain as it is everything else.

"When…" I hesitate. I want to swallow the words and go back to falling in love with her but there's a dishonesty in hiding. I don't want to lie to her. I don't want to hide. So the words spill out, fighting my every urge to keep them in. "When you have someone in your life for so long, it can feel like they're a part of you. Like you can't imagine what life would be like without them."

She knows what's coming. Her shoulder brushes up against mine and stays there. Her warmth is comfort enough, doing more than a few thousand words ever could.

"When you and Oscar broke off, did it feel like you were still… you?" I ask.

"Like I was still me when I wasn't with him?" She gives the ground a thoughtful glance before she shies away and says, "Yeah. I guess I did…"

"Did that ever feel wrong? Like you expected more pieces of yourself to have broken off?"

She pauses. "I want to hear your answer first. How much of yourself did you think you'd lose?"

"If I'm being honest, I thought all of me would have. Instead, it was almost like…"

"…Relief?" She finishes.

The word lingers till it's heavy in our hearts.

We come upon an old fountain. It hasn't run water in years due to some mishap with the piping that was too expensive to fix, so instead people have left plants and flowers here to grow. Vines scramble over its stonework, simulating cascading waters in motionless greens.

"What happened to you two?" she asks me. "You never did tell me how you two broke up."

There's a stony lump in my throat again but I swallow it. It's a trade I have to make, even though I know she'll let me keep this to myself, I owe it to her.

"She moved to Vacuo for an important job, and I moved here because I've always wanted to. We made new friends, found exciting new experiences, and the longing for each other was always brief and lost over a video call. We didn't notice at the time but we got comfortable with building entirely separate lives. Funnily enough, we thought it was just us being good at long-distance relationships. And if things had gone differently, that might have been the case, but it didn't. I jumped the shark and we all got hurt."

I take her hand and thumb over the ring as she closes the gap between us; our waists flush against each other. "She visited Argus and I proposed at the end of our first night back together. Sable brought up the family tradition of proposing with the family ring, and that's probably when it started to fall apart. We realized over that first week just how differently we'd changed."

I had, for so long, imagined that I'd find Pyrrha again as exactly who she was before she left for Vacuo – the same academy sweetheart with a pension for repeat apologies and a quiet compassion hidden shyly behind her eyes – but she wasn't like that anymore. She was more excitable and outgoing, louder and so freed from whatever insecure shackles had tethered her to be demure. I loved the new side of her, reveled in her bursting joy, but it was like I was getting to know her all over again. It might have been beautiful had it not all come too soon.

"The new her was different, the new me was different. And although we knew we loved each other, we didn't know how to fit into each other's lives anymore."

Staring at the ring, I still remember how cold it felt as it rolled in my hand. I'd always wanted to have it, dreamed of being it passed down to me since I was young, but there was none of that excitement when I was up at three-AM with it before Pyrrha was meant to go back to Vacuo.

I didn't want it to drag on for much longer. I didn't want to put either of us through that strain. We tried to have fun but there was always the sense that something had gone wrong and that our pieces stopped fitting. And I knew Pyrrha didn't want to say anything because she was deftly afraid of hurting me that she was willing to pretend that things were fine, even though I could see right through her.

"…Jaune?" Ruby's voice tears me back. Her hand is over mine, covering the ring. Adrian is nestled into the crux of her arm, head turned back to give me the same worried expression.

I breathe.

"Sorry."

She kisses my cheek. "Don't be." Adrian mumbles and I imagine he's trying to say the same. "Go on," she says, her voice in a whisper. Her smile encouraging.

"She didn't want to hurt me, so she didn't say anything. But I knew that, if she went back to Vacuo, things might just get worse. So I crawled into bed with her at three-AM, and she was wide awake, thinking the same things… We broke up under the sheets."

There was a single desperate moment at the end as I was seeing her off at Seagate station. We kissed, hoping it might rekindle what we had and maybe we didn't have to call off the wedding. But it made it harder to see each other off, knowing that the wounds we'd cut into each other had to be healed by other people. The ones who were in the lives we'd built apart from each other.

Ruby wipes my face. My eyes were getting watery. "Don't cry," she says, trying not to cry herself. She's too sympathetic, so much so that Adrian looks like the strongest between the three of us.

Adrian tugs on my ear, I yelp and she laughs. I stare at her as she looks away shyly, her eyes roving the potted plants around the fountain.

"A broken fountain seems out-of-place in a city like this," she says.

It's funny how the old thing was like a reflection of my life here. I was here when they installed it so I've been around for as long as it has. "It's actually slated to be replaced by a statue. They're just looking… for…"

My mouth unhinges. I hold back the sharp inhale. This was where I proposed to Pyrrha. I hadn't been thinking it when I sat down with Ruby, and yet here I am.

"You alright?" she and Adrian give me an askance stare.

I nearly burst out laughing. I snicker instead. Being with Ruby has etched her into the city. I haven't come to this fountain in years and yet, here I am, sat by it without a second thought. Thinking of Pyrrha might have brought me here, but I don't sit here thinking it'll burn me to think about the proposal or the break up anymore.

Ruby has such a presence in my life that it's almost crazy how many of my old aches seem to vanish around her.

Maybe it's no more cosmic than Ruby simply making me happy. Maybe it's no more profound than finding someone to connect to. Maybe I just needed a friend in the right place, at the right time. A wonderful little fluke. A happy accident.

"What's up with you?" she asks with a laugh.

I stare at her, then her lips, and she already knows what's coming cause she covers Adrian's eyes and leans in.

We kiss because there's a desperate need to sort things out. To love and love completely, and to endure all the growing pains that comes with it.

Whether or not I want to fall in love with Ruby Rose is out of the question. It's already happened and the collision course when tomorrow ends is an inevitability I can't change.

Because I want to ask if what we have doesn't have to last a week. But asking feels as naïve as it is damning.

Long distance relationships just don't work most of the time and the delusion that we get to be the exception is precisely the trap that ruins what would have otherwise have been beautiful friendships. So I steel myself because what we have can stay as it is. That we don't have to tarnish it.

But even as I tell myself that I won't want to repeat the mistakes of my past, I can't help but think that – before this all ends – I'll kiss her goodbye anyway.

And I'm not sure if I'll end up regretting it.

That was exhausting. I wanted to just get this out the door but I wasn't happy with the first few versions of this so rewrites were on the menu and I got a laborious five-course meal. Still, after a long talk with a good friend of mine, I got my rhythm back. Honestly, this story deserves a more refined rewrite but I'll save my ideas for a Lancaster story with a romantic subplot rather than the main focus. I tend to prefer romance when it's sprinkled in rather than be the whole focus.

That said, I'd like to clarify that I'm not saying that long-distance relationships don't work. Only that I can confidently tell you that it's hard. I was in a relationship for two years with my childhood friend during high school. We were as close as two people could get and even then we had ups and down we wouldn't have had if we stayed best friends instead. Regardless, despite it all, we were still close when it was over, but this is all a best case scenario for a difficult situation.

Anyway, this story is slated for two more updates: the final chapter and the epilogue. (Because I can't not do epilogues) So, thank you for sticking by this story so far! Much love to all my reviewers and followers. Glad ya'll liked it enough to see it through.

And special thanks to Astray-Tech for being a wonderful human being. Buddy, you give me strength.

…

OH! And before I forget, I'm doing a sci-fi horror story soon. But with a TWIST! The end of certain chapters will present a choice that the audience will get to decide for our boy Jaune. So the story is partially audience-driven. Might even publish it before the epilogue for this story comes out. But I'm looking for a beta reader who is willing to endure my scattered ideas and maybe listen to me bounce those ideas off of them. If you'd be willing to endure this hefty romp with me, let me know! I'll otherwise keep asking folks in my author's notes till I find someone who fits.