"Will you slow down?" An aggregated growl followed the odd pair as Ruby pulled Adam by his wrist through the living room. After three days of rest, his Aura has mostly taken care of the worst of things, though his bones were still cracked and he was still weak from his ordeal.
"Heh-heh, oops! Sorry, but I've been wanting to show you this since you got here and now you can finally walk, I guess I got a bit carried away." The bubbly young woman in the frilly, short red dress guided her new roommate towards a door at the end of her home.
"I'm still healing, human." It seemed that his impromptu caretaker found new and creative ways to test his patience each and every day. The blind leading the crippled… how far I've fallen. It's all the Schnee's fault! I swear, the next time we meet I'll put my blade right through her heart!
"You know, you keep calling me that, I'm starting to wonder if I should take you to the hospital because you might have brain damage. Come on, prove me wrong and tell me my name." Ruby didn't turn around as she came to a dead stop, still holding him by his write. Still, she didn't need to face him, he could just tell she was smirking behind that head of dark, red tipped hair.
"Grr… don't push it." Despite his most threatening snarl he could summon up, the woman half his size didn't even flinch.
"Hmm, that's no good. You can't even remember my name and I've told you several times. You may have a concussion, I think I should call the-"
"Ruby…" Her name slipped bitterly and quietly under his breath.
"What was that? I couldn't hear you, I'm sorry, could you please say it just one more time so I know you're okay?" She sounded so smug and proud of herself, it infuriated him as much as it impressed him. Very few spoke to him like that, there were those that feared him, those that hated him, and those that respected him. She didn't quite fit.
"Ruby. There, I said it, now can we get this over with?!" No matter how he bellowed, the tiny blind girl never faltered.
"Good, I'm glad your brain isn't broken. Come on, it's just over here!" With a giggle as warm as a summer breeze, she continued, effortlessly navigating her home, avoiding the living room furniture and managing to walk in a fairly straight line towards the door.
"Oh! You should close your eyes!" Once more, she came to a dead stop, her hand hovering centimeters above the handle to the door.
"What? Why?" The girl never stopped pushing and prodding him… It's like she's trying to test my patience!
"Because I want you to be surprised, obviously." She shook his wrist in a display of impatient excitement.
"It's not like you'll know if I actually close my eyes or not so why bother asking?" He huffed, shoving one hand in his pocket while he looked up at the door.
"I can hear you blink so don't try to pull one over on me!"
"Oh, so you have super hearing now?" Adam scoffed, an unintentional smirk pulling at his lips before he immediately locked it back down into a casual scowl. "Fine."
"Good, now, follow me." Adam's eyes were closed, but he could hear her silvery voice grow just a little softer before the sound of the knob turning preceded a rush of warm air.
He felt a tug at his wrist usher him forward, a gentle hand urging him to follow. At first, he retracted, he wasn't sure why, he knew he wasn't in danger, but he pulled back before he even realized it. Still, her hand just held his wrist a little tighter and waited for him, not pulling, just holding.
Steeling himself with a hard and defiant exhale, he stepped forward, following her through the threshold of the door.
"Keep them closed and take a deep breath through your nose." Ruby gave her instructions with a dreamy voice, a tone so content and happy he almost opened his eyes out of curiosity… but he didn't.
He didn't speak a word of protest even though one was right on his tongue. Instead, Adam did what she said, knowing he didn't have much choice anyway. So, begrudgingly, he began to take a long, deep breath…
"Flowers…" He muttered absently while he imbibed the sweet scent that saturated the air.
"Yep! You can open your eyes now!" With that excited declaration, Ruby released him, leaving him alone in the darkness, until his eyelids lifted, returning his sight.
Adam stood there, in the middle of a densely stocked and beautifully kept nursery. Flowers and herbs and all manner of plants grew together under the protection of a plastic roof and walls. All as meticulously organized as the inside of Ruby's home.
"Well, what do you think?!" Before him Ruby stood with a beaming smiling shining expectantly at him amidst her flowers.
"You… did all of this?" Adam was all but speechless. He could barely take a single step without his sight… And yet, this little human woman…
"Yep!" Ruby puffed out her chest proudly. "Well, most of it, my sister, Dad, and friends came and helped me set it up in the first place, but I've been maintaining it mostly by myself for years. I'm the proud owner of Summer's Grace Nursery and Florist!"
"I see…" His brain was still struggling to process what he was seeing and learning, and all he kept recalling was darkness he was afraid to step into, even with an experienced hand guiding him. I might not have given this human enough credit, but still, she's just a human.
"How do you arrange flowers if you can't see?" His mouth was moving quicker than his brain, his expression rapidly devolved from surprise to regret and back to his trademark scowl in just a couple of seconds.
"Actually, It's kinda why my business does so well, people like the novelty. 'A blind florist did the arrangements' they brag but I do my best, as long as it makes people happy. I use texture, scent and shape to figure out what flowers go well together. Obviously, I don't know if they look good, but I haven't gotten any complaints. If I'm being honest though, sometimes I think they wouldn't tell me anyway…" A long and heavy sigh escaped her lungs as her fingers gently played with bright pink petals of a large flower in front of her.
For the first time, he saw her face take on a distant, forlorn expression. She looked lost and for a moment, it's how he imagined he might have looked taking that step with his eyes closed; uneasy and unsure.
"I'm going back inside." It was all he could say, he felt uncomfortable, pulled in two equally uncomfortable directions. So, without another word, he limped back into the house, and closed the door.
"R-right… I guess I should make dinner soon anyway." With a heavy heart, she followed him.
A small flame burned beneath a cast iron pan and oil bubbled and hissed as Ruby stood over the stove. She hummed a sweet but somehow sad tune while she prodded the still cooking meat with a silicone flipper. Meanwhile, a timer on the oven counted down to its final minutes as the casserole was readying to be done.
Adam watched, being asked to keep the radio off while she cooked, apparently because she could use her hearing to tell when the food was done. He obliged, out of fear that his name may come up on the radio. So all he could do was sit and watch her cook, an oddly fascinating spectacle, he found.
"Hey, you need to walk some more to get better, would mind grabbing me the paprika, it's in a little glass bottle, second shelf left of the oven, middle rack, all the way to the left, in front of the sage." Ruby ordered him around while diligently tending to the other pans on the stove.
"Fine." He was less than thrilled, especially as he winced in pain from merely standing up. With much groaning and complaining that his caretaker seemed completely unempathetic to, he ambled into the kitchen.
"Thanks, food's almost done, just a few more minutes and-"
Smash!
"What happened!? Adam! Adam are you okay?!" Ruby all but went into a panic, her hand nearly missing the temperature dial on the stove before she turned it down and turned her ears towards where she last heard him.
"I'm fine, I just dropped the bottle you asked for." He bared his teeth in anger as he began to bend down to pick up the spice covered glass shards. "Gah!"
"Stop that! You can't be bending over right now, you're still healing!" Ruby snapped at him while taking a cautious step back from where she heard the glass break.
"Oh, and I suppose you've got some trick to find it? Just shut up and let me-" His words came to an abrupt stop and he just stared blankly down at the broken glass while he held his ribs tenderly with one hand. Why am I acting like this? What concern is it of mine if she hurts herself? Wait, I know, if she gets hurt and has to call on her family for help, they might recognize me. Okay, yes, that makes sense…
"We're going to have to work together." Ruby put on a fiery expression burning with fierce determination before she turned around and walked confidently to a small closet from which she pulled out a broom with attached dustpan. "Tell me when I'm getting close, I'm counting on you."
"Right, just get on with it, I'm hungry." Adam just shook his head while he walked around the glass towards her, considering kicking it to make a sound Ruby could follow but stopping once he realized that would just spread the glass around.
"Okay, here I go." With a deep breath she summoned her resolve and took a gingerly foot forward, unaware that Adam's free hand was stretched out over the glass to stop her from hurting herself, strictly to protect his identity.
"Okay, warmer… warmer… no, colder, come on! That's the opposite of warmer! Stop going that way and turn around!" His shouts sent waves of pain through his side but he barely noticed them as he tried poorly to help her navigate.
"Hahaha, sorry! You're just fun when you get like that. For reals this time, I promise." Ruby stifled her laughs to focus on the task at hand, despite how fun it was messing with her roommate.
"Warmer. Warmer… just a little bit more, move slowly. There." The search came to an end as the dustpan scraped the glass gently against the floor, the sensation and sound telling Ruby that she had found the spot. Adam helped her position the broom so she didn't sweep the shards all over the floor and then, with only a few sweeps, the mess was safely cleaned.
"Adam! We did it!" She turned her head towards him and her smile sparkled, far outshining the dusk's last light that shone on her from the kitchen window. Such a simple victory hardfought and well won. To him, it looked like the face not so different from those of his men coming back from a fierce battle.
"They don't look terrible." Once again, words just slipped out, but this time, he didn't retract from them them. Ruby's confused look somehow compelled him to finish even when he never even intended to speak about it.
"Your flowers, the arrangements I saw, I've seen worse." He looked as hard and unhappy as ever, however, although Ruby couldn't see it and he didn't know it, his eyes grew a little bit softer. So too, did his voice, something Ruby picked up on instantly.
"I'm glad… thanks, for being honest with me"
"Get back to cooking before you burn the house down." With that cold response, Adam turned around and made his way back to the couch, where he would finish watching her from a distance, without her knowing.
"Right! Back to work!"