This is actually set slightly before the events of the previous chapter, so a slight rewind here. Enjoy!


"Ruby!"

When Nora had come to stop by her friend's room before dinner to retrieve the comic book that Ruby had said she could borrow, she hadn't expected to find the younger girl in tears, curled up on the bed facing away from her. She's at her friend's side in an instant, wrapping her arm around skinny shoulders and taking a seat next to Ruby on the bed. "What's wrong?"

Ruby had been acting a bit subdued since that morning, but Nora had just chalked it up to general mushiness over being reunited with Yang and Weiss. She's kicking herself for that now.

"N—nothing," Ruby stammers quickly, scrubbing furiously at her face. "It's not a big deal, really, Nora. I'm fine."

"You don't seem 'fine' to me," Nora insists, putting air quotes around the word fine. "C'mon, Ruby, I didn't meet you yesterday. Clearly something's got you upset. And anything that's got you down is important to me. C'mon, spill."

But Ruby shakes her head. "Really, Nora, I'm okay. I'm just being silly, overreacting about something tiny."

Nora shakes her head and doesn't budge. "Yeah, no, I'm not buying what you're selling, Rubes. Like I said, I didn't meet you yesterday. I know you better than that." She pretends to be lost in thought for a moment. "Do I need to bring out my secret weapon?" she teases, wiggling her fingers for emphasis.

"Wha—no!" Ruby yelps, scrambling away slightly. The threat of tickling does manage to bring a tiny smile to her face, and although it's small, it's a welcome change from her previous misery.

After all, what are friends for, if not to be able to make you smile even when you're crying?

It takes a few more minutes, but eventually Nora manages to pry the story of what happened out of Ruby, bit by bit, and Nora is left fuming—not at Ruby, obviously. Once upon a time she would have assumed that her friend knew that even though Nora was upset, it wasn't with her, but after months on the road together, Nora has learned that it's a good idea to make it clear to the younger girl that she's not angry with her, otherwise Ruby will assume that she's done something wrong and fret endlessly.

"Well, screw them, then," is Nora's eloquent conclusion of how she feels about the situation. She, Jaune, and Ren had seen how much Ruby had missed her team during their travels, and deeply grieved their separation. To hear that they were already shoving Ruby away and not appreciating how much she cared about them—already—makes Nora want to go talk some sense into them. With her fists. But that would only make Ruby even more upset, so that's off the table.

Ruby makes an odd sound, a combination of a weak laugh and a gasp. "Nora, they're my teammates!"

"So?" Nora shrugs, unrepentant, slinging an arm around Ruby to draw her close again. "They're being jerks. You didn't do anything wrong. They shouldn't be shoving you away and snapping at you for trying to help and insisting on discussing this kind of thing without you, especially when you guys have been apart for months. That's not how good teammates act."

Ruby sighs heavily. "Yang's always been like that, when she's upset. She doesn't mean it."

"Maybe that's true, but Yang's a big girl now. She should be able to get a better handle on her temper, or at least apologize for snapping at you."

"Yeah, maybe," Ruby murmurs, rubbing her face tiredly. Crying always wears her out pretty fast. "I just—I was so scared, for a while, that I would never see Yang or Weiss or Blake again, and now that Yang and Weiss are here it's like they don't even need me anymore, or want me around. How are we supposed to be a team when they won't even talk to me about big stuff like that? How am I supposed to be able to help them ? I just want my team back together again."

She sounds so tired, and defeated, it makes Nora's heart ache. But Ruby isn't alone, and Nora intends to remind her of that. "Well, if they don't want to talk, fine then. But I can promise you that the rest of us don't feel the same way." She takes one of Ruby's hands in her own and squeezes it. "Don't forget, Ruby, you're not just a member of team RWBY anymore. You're part of RNJR now, too. And I can promise you that we will always want you around."

Ruby looks at her gratefully for a long moment. "Thanks, Nora," she finally says, sitting up and attempting to scrub her face clean of tear tracks.

"Anytime," Nora replies with a smile. "Now, I'll go ahead and let the others know that you'll be a little late for dinner. Something about spilling oil all over your face while you were cleaning Crescent Rose."

"Nora!" Ruby exclaims indignantly, but she's grinning widely. "Thank you."

Seeing her friend in better spirits automatically puts Nora in a better mood. She shoots Ruby a quick thumbs up before she slips out of the room and heads downstairs.

If team RWBY isn't going to appreciate just how lucky they are to have Ruby Rose as their leader, team RNJR will just have to do it for them.


Thank you for reading! Please leave a review if you liked it.

This was originally only going to be a two chapter fic and this part was going to be at the start of ch.2 but I think it works better on it's own. So right now this is looking like it'll be a 4 chapter fic, assuming that I don't come up with any other extra ideas haha.