Absolutely nobody asked for a second part to this, but I wanted to write it so whatever. Enjoy!


For all her protests, Ruby passes out hard with her head on Yang's lap, drooling slightly and snoring the way she does when she's exhausted or hurting or both. Clearly her sister really needed this. Yang is surprised that she managed to hold out this long.

She runs a hand through Ruby's short hair, gently pushing it off her forehead. Her sister leans into the touch with a soft sigh. Yang isn't sure how long this little moment of peace will last, but she's hoping to keep the others off Ruby's back long enough for her sister to get enough rest.

Speaking of which . . .

"Hey, Ruby!" Jaune calls over to her, much too loud in the silent airship.

"Shhh," Yang mouths, putting a finger to her lips and shooting him a firm glare.

Jaune looks confused, but obediently lowers his voice, stepping closer in order to hear her better. "What are you—oh," he cuts himself off when he notices Ruby. "Is now really the best time to be taking a nap? We need to be figuring out what we should do next."

"She's exhausted, let her sleep," Yang replies. She glances down at her sister, but Ruby barely stirs at Jaune's voice, just turns her head slightly until her nose is against Yang's thigh and huffs quietly. "Might as well get some rest while we can. The rest of us can come up with a plan in the meantime."

They're all exhausted, but given that Ruby had been about to keel over earlier, she probably needs to sleep the most.

"I guess that works," Jaune says, not looking entirely convinced. Then, "So what should we do next?"

Yang runs a hand through her hair with a sigh. With the way that Jaune is looking at her, she's starting to understand the weight of the constant pressure that Ruby must feel. She hates it. "Let's see," she says, thinking through the (very long) list of their problems at the moment and trying to pick one that's relatively easy to solve. "Do we have any idea what happened to Qrow?"

"No," Jaune sighs, shaking his head. "Last anyone heard from him and Robyn, they had Tyrian is custody and were heading back to Atlas. No one's heard from them since. And we haven't been able to track down his scroll signal."

Well then. Option one is a bust. Qrow is either in Atlas custody right now (not good), or he's been taken by Tyrian back to Salem (very not good). Or maybe he crashed and landed somewhere in the tundra. Whatever happened, it's probably not good, and they have no way of knowing where they should start looking for him or if he's okay. Yang tries not to assume the worst; her uncle is a fighter, after all, and he won't go down easily. They'll just have to trust him to get out of whatever situation he's in until they can find him.

"What about Oscar?" Yang asks, after pausing to think for a moment. "Have you guys heard from him since he ran off?"

"We haven't heard anything from him, but I guess I could try looking up his location again," Jaune says, fiddling with his scroll. "Last time it didn't show him anywhere but maybe this time—aha!" He turns the screen so Yang can see it better. She leans over to look, careful not to dislodge Ruby from her lap. "His aura is really low for some reason, but at least we know where he is now. How'd he end up down in Mantle?"

Yang squints at the screen. She doesn't recognize the location, but at least it's a start. "No idea. Why don't you show those coordinates to Maria and we'll go find him?"

Jaune nods, standing up and heading towards the front of the airship.

Boom. They've got a plan. Maybe it's only a short-term plan, but it works for now. If they can just keep taking things one step at a time, they might just be able to get themselves out of this crazy situation.

Of course, it ends up taking them almost two hours to get to the location on Jaune's scroll, because of course they happened to be heading in the exact opposite direction of where Oscar is. Plus, their newly fugitive status means that they need to take extra care to avoid being noticed by the other Atlas airships.

If only they could turn the ship invisible, that would be helpful.

Yang finds herself dozing off over the course of the journey, head lolling against the wall she's sitting against. As the airship begins to make its descent, Ruby finally begins to stir. She blinks sleepily, silver eyes drifting up to Yang's face, before abruptly jerking upright. "Sleep well?" Yang asks, for once not teasing.

Her sister looks better for the rest. She still looks tired and pale, but she's not squinting or crying anymore, so that's a good sign. Napping must have helped her headache. "Where are we going?"

"Jaune managed to track down Oscar on his scroll, so we're heading to pick him. We're heading to Dr. Polendina's clinic after, to come up with an actual plan."

"Good thinking, Yang," Ruby says with a small smile. She pushes herself cautiously to her feet, attempting to smooth down her hair and make herself presentable—and yawns widely. "I guess I needed some sleep."

When Ruby suggests the plan to make sure that Amity is launched and reestablish global communications, Yang is torn. A part of her—a large part of her, really—wants to stay down in Mantle and help the citizens that have been abandoned by Atlas.

But when Ruby looks at her anxiously for support, still looking exhausted and too pale despite her best attempts at seeming confident, Yang falters. She remembers her sister from the night before, a sobbing mess of grief and pain after Salem got in her head and whatever that weird jellyfish-looking Grimm did to her. Yang can't abandon her sister now. Family should stick together.

"Sounds like a plan, sis." Ruby smiles gratefully at her. "I'll follow your lead."


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

Nobody:

Me, who already has about half a dozen AUs and series in progress: what if I wrote an AU of volume 8 that nobody asked for where Ruby and Yang stuck together and acted like sisters?

So yeah, I'll occasionally add little snippets to this whenever I get inspired. Like my other AUs, it won't be a full story, just little snippets of whatever I feel like writing. I haven't fully decided if just Yang is going to stick with the other girls or whether the whole group is going to stick together; it'll probably just depend on whatever is easiest to write.

Reminder that I do take writing requests so if there's something that you'd like to see me write please feel free to message me about it and if I like it I'll probably write something for it.