Although she's hungry, Ruby finds her enthusiasm waning as she joins the others for dinner. Between her exhaustion from training and the conversation she just had with Ozpin, she feels incredibly drained, both physically and emotionally. All she wants is for today to be over, so she can crawl into bed and go to sleep.
Hopefully tomorrow will be better.
Brushing off any concern from her friends by insisting that she's just tired, Ruby pastes on a smile and tries to eat quickly despite the lump in her throat. Once she's eaten what she thinks is a reasonable amount, she clears her plate, still forcing herself to smile, and announces that she's going to go shower. Hopefully no one notices how quiet she's been, or how strained her normal effortless cheeriness seems.
As she gets ready for bed, Ruby tries hard not to think too much about what Ozpin had said earlier, but it's hard not to dwell on his words. Was she really holding back, rejecting the power of the Fall Maiden that had been passed on to her? Is that why she's having such a hard time learning how to use her new abilities.
Settling into bed and tugging the covers up to her chin, Ruby shuts her eyes to feign sleep in case anyone comes in. It's true that she feels a bit uncomfortable with having the Fall Maiden's powers passed down to her. It's something she'd never wanted or expected to happen to her, and she hadn't been given any time to prepare herself for that kind of power.
And then there's the fact that the powers had previously belonged to Cinder that keeps niggling at her. Cinder, the person who'd killed Pyrrha and Penny and attacked Beacon, destroying her school and hurting so many people that she cared about. Ruby's not eager to accept anything from her, good or bad.
It also means that now Cinder is dead, and that for some reason Ruby was in her final thoughts for some reason. She isn't sure how she should feel about either of those facts.
There's also the constant reminder during training that these powers were supposed to go to Pyrrha, not Ruby. Pyrrha had been Ozpin's original choice to inherit the Fall Maiden's abilities, and Ruby can't help but feel that she's stolen something from her lost friend. Plus, Ruby keeps thinking that Pyrrha definitely would have made a better Maiden than she ever could.
She's not sure how she can ever live up to that kind of lost potential.
Lost in her thoughts, she doesn't hear her teammates when they come in to go to bed. She doesn't remember falling asleep, but she knows that it takes her a lot longer than usual. Her head is too crowded with thoughts and worries for sleep to come to her.
For the first time in a while, she dreams about Pyrrha.
In her dream, she once again arrives too late, once again reaching the top of the tower just in time to see the arrow pierce through her friends flesh, and her body crumble to ash in a brilliant surge of light. She once again feels the guilt and despair and anger at witnessing her friends fate without being able to prevent it in any way. And once again, her vision fills with bright white as she triggers the special abilities that her silver eyes apparently give her, according to Qrow.
But then something unexpected happens. The bright light abruptly fades, and suddenly Ruby finds herself in a dark room that she doesn't recognize. When she glances to her left, she sees a girl that looks slightly older than her, with dark hair drawn back into two ponytails and amber eyes. She seems oddly familiar.
There are tears trickling down her cheeks as she looks down at the ground in front of her, and Ruby follows her gaze to see what she's staring at—and gasps. The other girl is standing over the body of a man with a sword embedded in his chest. Upon hearing Ruby's gasp, the girl turns her head to glare at Ruby. "You shouldn't be here," she tells her.
What feels like only moments later, Ruby wakes up in her own bed with a start, wondering what the heck she just saw. It had started off as a nightmare she'd had so many times, but she doesn't think that she's ever seen that girl or the dead man before—although the girl had seemed oddly familiar. What was that all about, and why had Ruby seen it?
Maybe it doesn't mean anything at all. Maybe it was just a weird dream. But Ruby finds herself seriously doubting that.
She finds herself laying there, wide-awake, for the rest of the night.
As soon as the sun starts to rise and it seems like a reasonable time to be awake, Ruby rolls out of bed and gets dressed, staying quiet as to let her teammates sleep, before hurrying down to the kitchen to grab some coffee. In the sunlight, it feels a bit easier to shake off the remnants of last night's dream.
She's not trying to avoid Ozpin, not really, but still, her stomach sinks a bit when she heads to the table to drink her coffee and finds him already sitting there. Forcing a smile on her face, she takes a seat at the table across from him. "Good morning, Miss Rose. I hope that you slept well."
"Yes," she lies, taking a sip of her coffee. "Did you?"
"Well enough," he answers her with a smile. "Ruby, I'm glad to see that you're up early. I was hoping you could fill in the rest of your teammates that they need to get packing. We're leaving to take the train to Argus tomorrow."