The recovery room was unnaturally quiet while Ruby anxiously bounced her knee, waiting for Jade to wake up.

The lack of beeping monitors and whirring pumps would have been peculiar if Jade was recovering from some injury or sickness — instead, only the odd sniffle or cough from one of the eight occupants of the room combated the oppressive silence. Well, eight total , but only six were really in a state to make sound; Blake was sleeping with their daughter on the hospital bed. The two breathed silently, wrapped in Ruby's cloak, their ears occasionally twitching at some unknown disturbance. Ruby's heart melted at the sight, though she wished the circumstances were better.

As for the rest: A pair of guards—Gelo and Lem, two of Councilwoman Politan's absolute best—stood silently at the doorway, and if Ruby wasn't already on a first name basis with them from her dealings with the Council's security detail, she'd definitely wonder if either one ever so much as blinked behind their red sunglasses. The two healthy members of team ORNJ, Kali and Nyanza, were keeping Reaper from going crazy while they were confined to bed rest and practically drowning in flowers, cards, and other get-well-soons.

Jade had told her moms that Reaper had a big family, but Ruby hadn't realized exactly what ' Family' she meant until Mr. Xiong himself made an appearance barely minutes after Ruby and Yang had arrived from their respective classrooms.

The sight of the head of what was once among the largest crime families in Vale crashing into a medical ward like a mama bear looking for its cub was probably Ruby's favorite memory from the past week. That, and the look on Junior's face when he realised that between him and his child stood the last person on Remnant he still called 'Sir'. Yang luckily seemed to catch on quicker than Ruby, and directed him to where both Reaper and Jade were getting looked over.

He waited for the next several hours with wringing hands and a few too many ignored calls to be good. Like most who lived their lives within the relative safety of Vale's walls, Junior wasn't exactly familiar with just how resilient Hunters could be. He knew they could take beatings, sure, but to the general public Grimm attacks were magnitudes worse than bar brawls or even gang wars.

Reaper had only been hurt... not lightly, but their injuries were far from the worst Ruby had seen across her tenure. Three cracked ribs, two broken, and a femur doing its best impression of Penny Polendina (the first) in the spirit of the upcoming anniversary of her death. There was a real chance that their leg had been severed by the crushed metal plating, but thanks to Cinder's quick thinking,they were cut out of their armor before the limb before the damage became permanent, and cybernetic replacements were needed. They were mostly healed already, but the bruising had kept them on bedrest.

The Prostheticist's call was still close enough that Ruby had to take stock of just how dangerous her own coin-mail could be to herself. Armor was a rare sight in the Hunter profession for a reason, and this reminder of exactly why that was the case made Ruby reconsider just how closely she wanted to skirt the line between what-ifs.

Jade was fine, at least, when compared to Reaper. She had a scrape or two, but otherwise just wasn't awake. Ruby knew that the rampaging Grimm had one moment been attacking the viewing window then suddenly, after a veritable bomb-blast of light, no longer existed. With some rather obvious clues like Jade condition afterwards and Reaper's account of the Splitback's normally-mortal grip not actually killing them, Ruby put together that Jade's Silver Eye was the most likely source. And from personal experience she knew that the first one felt like an airship crashing through your bones.

For all her life experience, for every world-changing, mind-bending, limit-testing wonder that she had been part of, being on this side of the recovery was novel for Ruby. And she was probably more scared now than she'd ever been while facing down a Grimm.

Ruby fought to keep herself from pacing. Waiting was nerve wracking, even if she knew from personal experience Jade would be fine. Still the anxiety continued to batter against her ribcage, and all Ruby could really do was stare at two of the most important people in her life as they slept on the same hospital bed. Ruby had no idea how her dad had dealt with the stress she and Yang had put him through throughout the years. She was, maybe selfishly, glad that whatever deciding factor responsible for Silver Eyes had skipped Brennen as far as anyone could tell. Ruby wasn't sure she could handle another three-day wait for one of her babies to wake up.

Whatever other thought had been about to form in Ruby's head was instantly chucked out the nearest window and forgotten. Blake was awake, her ears perked and her widened eyes boring into Ruby's. Her form was visibly tense beneath the red 'blanket' but she hadn't moved otherwise. That kind of reaction could only mean a handful of things, but given the circumstances…

" Mhph… daaaad. Tell the light to shhhhhhh. s'too loud." Jade mumbled as she covered her face with Blake's arm.

Ruby went from being seated along the wall to standing by the bed as quickly as her semblance allowed. She wanted desperately to leap into the air and shower both of them in petals and hugs, but settled for a single crushing hug accompanied by an only slightly ear-shattering squeal of joy.

Blake smiled and moved her arm back, away from Jade's face. "No can do, kitten. You're long overdue for a wake up." She finished with a kiss to each golden ear atop Jade's head and an affectionate squeeze to her on-going hug. Jade squirmed a bit, but didn't exactly put up a fight against the affection.

The curtain separating Jade from her team slid open a fraction. Kali and Nyanza, responding to the influx of happy sounds, poked their heads in, one on top of the other, leaving Reaper to try and lean far enough forward to see through the split without just falling out of their bed completely.

"Besides, kiddo, your team is waiting. Vytal's coming up, remember?" Ruby said.

Jade bolted upright into a sitting position while keeping her eyes screwed shut. "Reaper! Mom, Dad, is Reaper okay? There was a Grimm, and Miss Fall, and Reap—!"

Ruby heard the frustrated 'wumph' of a head falling back into its pillow. "Jei, I swear to JNPR! If the first thing out of your mouth is worrying about me, I will hobble to our room and back, and beat you to death with your massive collection of sex toys!" Reaper practically shouted.

Jade sputtered and blushed at the claim of ownership, but Ruby was honestly more curious about why Reaper had sworn to JNPR of all things.

Reaper cackled briefly until interrupted by Nyanza stepping back and closing the curtain - followed by the sound of some kind of impact, and finally an incredulous "Ow! Hey, I'm injured!"

Ruby smiled at the good-natured ribbing, reminded of the times Nora, Coco, and Yang had moaned loudly when Pyrrha was in a call with her parents. Blake chuckled wistfully at what was probably the same memory.
Taking that as a cue, Nyanza laughed triumphantly and threw the curtain open the rest of the way, revealing a thoroughly browbeaten Reaper surrounded by the fluffy innards of a pillow. Unphased by whatever cushiony violence had just taken place, Kali closed the remaining distance to Jade's bed.

"We were so worried about you, Jade," Kali fretted. "The doctors said you were okay, but you've been out for like three days! Are you hungry? Thirsty? Do you need another pillow? Less pillows?"

Before Kali could really start rambling, Jade interrupted by using Blake's arm as a haphazard Kali-swatter. "Kay, shush. You sound like my Beba."

Blake played along, doing her best to keep from actually smacking the girl who shared a name with her mother, turning the majority of the action into a hair tussle instead of just rubbing her knuckles into Kali's face repeatedly.

"Your grandma doesn't sound anything like that," Ruby corrected. "Your grandpa though? Total pillow-fluffer."

For her efforts in grandparent pedantism, Ruby received a swat from Blake's totally still out of control arm. Ruby dodged in just the wrong way, and instead of getting hit on the boob ended up taking the brunt of the impact to the nose.

"Ack! Not the face, my good looks are the only reason Weiss loves me!"

Blake nearly managed to fall off the bed— over the rails specifically designed to prevent that happening—from laughing.

Blake quickly sobered when Kali piped in again. "Jei, are the lights really that bright?" Her brow furrowed with concern. "Sensitivity to light is something you're only supposed to have just after a head injury. If you've still got a concussion…" Kali trailed off as Jade sat upright.

Ruby realized he was right. Jade was showing symptoms that she didn't remember going through. And Maria, the only other Silver Eyed anybody Ruby knew personally, had never really spoken about her first experience with her eyes.

"One second, I don't want to bring a doctor in if it's just me being a baby." Jade scrunched her entire face in prelude to squinting one eye open just enough to prove she still could. Looking around the room a bit to get her bearings she winked the lonely silver eye a few times. "Okay, so that one's fine…"

"Some time this month, Jei." Nyanza lightly rapped Jade's head with his knuckles. "Just because you might be dying doesn't mean we're not still dragging you to the Vytal Tournament."

While she definitely didn't agree with the young man's brusque delivery, Ruby was starting to worry about whether her little girl was going to have to find a way to incorporate an eyepatch into her everyday fashion.

Reaper was also sick of waiting, apparently. And they had their own style of getting what they wanted that worked just a bit better than motherly encouragement or team pride ever could. "Hey Jei," They called out while fiddling with a scroll that didn't seem to quite fit their style. "What's this folder labeled 'Reaper' with your homew—?"

Quicker than maybe even Ruby could move, Jade somehow managed to go from a sitting position into a full-blown pounce towards Reaper's bed, knocking Kali onto her back and sending Ruby's cloak—and the rest of the bed it rested on—haphazardly in the opposite direction. The sudden motion incited both Blake and Ruby to leap away to a safe distance, towards the door.

Before she could consider how to deal with the situation, Ruby was distracted from the violence that promised to follow when she noticed Lem and Gelo move for the first time in probably hours. Initially Ruby thought they were moving to try and prevent their charge from being used to give the room a new window. Instead both straightened up to look even more professional as the door opened to allow Yang and Weiss entrance.

Ruby wasn't entirely sure which one they were working to impress, given Yang's history with Junior, and Weiss' with the Council.

Both Yang and Weiss froze in the doorway at the sight of the ongoing kerfuffle, some combination of concern and confusion playing across their faces. Ruby, and probably Blake next to her, couldn't help but smile as relief washed across their partners' faces — the sounds of chaos were much preferable to graveyard silence.

A particularly expensive-sounding crash brought all four back to the present, causing everyone to wince and turn their eyes to Weiss.

After a quick look around to confirm that everyone was, in fact, looking at her, Weiss sighed in resignation. "I swear," she grumbled as she stalked towards the bedlam, "if anyone so much as thinks about making a comparison to Professor Goodwitch…"

Weiss didn't waste any time on showy glyph creation or extraneous hand waving. She planted her feet, and not so much as a finger twitched before four student bodies were flawlessly plucked from whatever they were doing by black glyphs forming around their limbs and torsos. The Hunters-in-Training were quickly relocated in front of Weiss as a large yellow glyph spread across the floor, accompanied by a starfield of purple glyphs floating in midair. An additional yellow glyph realized beneath the assembled occupants of the room. What followed was a rapid activation of multiple glyphs at seemingly the same time, some of them with multiple layers of colors all at once.

First (and Ruby knew it was first only because she had asked Weiss once; to her it all looked like a single fluid action) a bubble formed, centered on the smaller of the two yellow glyphs. It served as an anchor of sorts, anything within would be dynamically removed from the ensuing de -ensuing to prevent any weird happenings like having two Yangs who could never ever touch one another… or something like that.

Next, any and all glyphs which contained the purple etchings did their thing, while the massive yellow glyph below began to spin and glow. A chain of afterimages was formed leading from where an item currently was, to wherever it had been a few minutes before. In whatever state it had been in at the time. Liquids, sheets, flower petals now on the ground, every individual item got its own little self history lesson.

A green glyph traced at the end of every trail. And by the time the final trail found its end, the first several items in the sequence had already begun their journey back 'home'.

Every item traveled along its path, flying through the air in rewind, until it reached its corresponding green glyph and froze in place until each and every item in the room was perfectly back in place.

Ruby absolutely refused to believe Weiss' Semblance wasn't big-M Magic when she did things like that. Despite being awestruck, she was still slightly disappointed that Weiss didn't at least flair Myrtenaster — Ruby had been looking forward to seeing how well the newly built custom UHk/x hybrid worked.

When the final flower petal reattached to its bloom, all the glyphs blinked out at once, and the room was rendered as pristine as it had been minutes before. The anchor bubbled faded, and the room was once again bloated with silence. Silent, that is, except for the sound of Weiss tapping her shoe menacingly, and the subtle hum of the glyphs which still suspended the four students in midair.

"Reaper," Weiss said with a kind of courtroom pleasantness.

They snapped to as much attention as one could while hanging parallel to the floor. "Yes, ma'am."

"Have the doctors told you when you can return to regular activity?"

"T-today. But I have to keep the strain light until Monday."

Weiss nodded imperiously, and righted them into a standing position before releasing the glyphs holding them in place, and repeated the action for their non-Jade teammates. "You two, make sure they don't hurt themselves."

"Of course."

"No promises."

She nodded once more before turning to her daughter, who was floating upside down and facing away from everyone. With a twirl of her finger, Weiss gently flipped Jade and released her to stand on her own two feet — and wrapped her in a hug. Ruby certainly didn't need a signal more clear than that, and rushed to add herself to the affection, closely followed by Blake.

Being at the center of three moms, Jade was surrounded by love. Until all four were wrapped up by yet another pair of arms and lifted into the air.

And then she was being crushed by love.

And Yang.

Love and Yang.

"Ack, okay. Now I know how Rea felt."

Ruby looked down to see Jade's Silver eyes popping out of her skull like a cartoon characte—… silver eyes ? Plural?

Emerald Sustrai, Ruby was not. But she definitely remembered the color of her own daughter's eyes. And there was a disturbing lack of gold in Jade's left eye. No adorable heterochromatic reflection greeted Ruby's pure silver eyes.

Well, Ruby thought as Yang lowered them to the ground, no eyepatch needed, at least. She hugged her daughter tighter, trying to put the issue out of her mind for the moment. Whatever's going on can wait a few more minutes.

And if it can't, I'm going to drag a certain pair of immortals back to Remnant at the end of a leash.

A/N:

weeee! didn't expect that to take a month, but birthdays and the preplanning for another fic kinda got in the way, but here we are!

huge shout out to deTimber, YellHead and MellowYelloww for the beta and prereading they did. legitimately rewrote maybe 30% of it in the course of two days.

you are loved, and I love feedback.