Three humans and one spirit entered the old car, the raven flying just out of eyeshot. The ride was quiet except for the sound of the running engine and the tires upon dirt roads. Summer carefully examined Ruby from the front passenger seat, ensuring that Ruby was serious in her proclamation of destroying all Grimm.
Summer confirmed her worst fear, the look in her young daughter's eyes were unmistakable and ones that she recognized in the mirror. Eyes that held determination and the wellbeing of others above all else. Somehow, someway, she had to force her daughter to lose those eyes. The only question was how. In life, Summer's unique mind, her dull silver eyes, and her prowess with weapons alienated her from everybody else. Summer tried her best to act as human as possible, but nonetheless they'd always seen through her charade. Luckily for her, societal norms were a non-issue for the dead.
Her sole purpose was to save Ruby at all costs.
"Dad?" Ruby asked.
"Yes dear?"
"When can I make my weapon?"
While Yang and Taiyang were both surprised by the question, all Summer did was hiss in annoyance. She had to instill the concept that becoming a Hunter was pointless. It had to be utterly clear to Ruby's subconscious that the path of a Hunter was empty and devoid of meaning. The exact opposite of what she had attempted to imbue in her children at a young age, reading them stories where the heroes always triumphed and lived to see the next day. She hated herself for igniting such a passion, laying the seeds that would soon overgrow and consume the silver eyed reaper. Summer regretted not listening to Taiyang, and his suggestion that they should be allowed to grow up and choose their own path. But instead of doing that, she'd selfishly put her own wishes upon them. For all she knew, the same could happen to Yang, although she often thought Yang might be unsuited to the role.
Yang was too brash, and had too big a heart to do what a true hero needed to do. The idea of sacrificing another for any reason was something that horrified her, even at a young age, especially the idea of 'acceptable losses'.
Acceptable losses had been Summer's least favorite term in her life and death. It implied that the deaths of a few were considered okay, and within the ramifications of whatever mission she was assigned to. Her death was due to her direct opposition of the concept. Instead of pulling back and allowing the grimm to overtake the village, she had blazed a path forward through the cave Arnab with her chains. She was both unable to make the hard decisions, the one that would have allowed her to still live and save countless lives even at the price of the few, but still able to make the decisions that others would have too much fear to even consider.
"You can make your weapon soon. Signal should be starting up not too long from now. You should wait for your mother to come back, though. I'm sure she'd love to help you make it."
Summer didn't even react to the delusions of her husband, her mind in a kind of hibernation. She'd buried her real personality beneath masks and hoods, and it would take time to retrieve and dust off.
Yang, on the other hand, burst out as much sound as her small lungs would allow with, "She's dead!"
Taiyang sighed, patting her daughter's knee without looking back. He did so as if he knew better, as he was the adult and therefore always correct in any given situation. "You should have more faith in your mom."
The title of 'mom' was one that Summer would no longer recognize, her mask lowering as her eyes dulled further. In an attempt to fit in with a society that would never accept her, she had given up that which would have made her an excellent Hunter. Parading around with the idea of self-sacrifice, and reneging her true nature as a cold-blooded Hunter.
"I'm sure she'll be back. She probably wishes that she was next to you right now." Taiyang said, smiling and looking at his increasingly angry daughter. Her eyes flashed between red and lilac, but she had not come of age to reveal her semblance and its power, and therefore unable to maintain the anger she would later achieve in life.
She gave up, her eyes lowering from the rear view mirror as she stared at the floor. An unusually adult handling of the situation, and further proof of her rapid maturation.
"Can Uncle Qrow help me make my weapon, then?" Ruby asked.
"Honey, you really should wait for your mom. It'd make her very sad if she found out that you made your weapon without her. Remember how sad she was when Yang said she wanted me to help make her weapons?"
It was true. Summer had been a little hurt by the outright refusal of her adopted daughter, but she only nodded and smiled on the outside. Taiyang had seen through it immediately as he always had, but was unable to convince Yang to have Summer help her instead.
"But mom's dead." Ruby said, casually enough that it made even Taiyang question his sanity.
"Have more faith in your mom. She'll be back." Taiyang repeated, trying desperately to convince himself of this delusion.
The rest of the car ride went without event, and Summer's eyes closed. Spirits were the embodiment of a person's willpower, and Summer's willpower was immeasurable. If she truly wanted to reshape herself, there was no better time than when she was dead. Even still, it took time. She remained in the car long after the trio had left, waiting as she shifted her memories and values, her goals and desires. All of it pointing to her sole remaining purpose, to ensure that her daughter did not become a Hunter.
It was night when Summer 'awoke', the stars out and laughing at her for her refusal to join them. She ignored their jeers as she entered the house, moving through the door without issue and searching for her black haired daughter. Her presence was so strong at that moment, that if someone were to be sitting on the living room couch— say, a drunk and barely conscious Qrow— they might be able to see the visage of a fake hero that had recently passed, dressed in a white cloak stained with her blood.
Qrow shed a tear, convinced himself that his eyes weren't working, and passed out on the couch, reliving what were vivid and terrible dreams he had repeated for months.
The stairs did not creak as Summer ascended them. She passed by Taiyang's dark and unlit room, Yang's still lit room, and stopped at Ruby's room that held a soft light creeping underneath the door, the sort one reads by at night.
Summer did not knock as she entered the heir reaper's room. Ruby was sitting on the floor, diligently looking through books on how to build weapons. They were brand new, as they had been a gift to her from Summer, but had sat unused for months. Yet another passion she had forced on her daughter.
Ruby was a genius in a way similar to Summer, but tempered by Taiyang's humanity. She had the best of both worlds in terms of being human, but a far greater weight to bear if she wished to become a cold-blooded Hunter. One that weighed things logically, coldly, and with an absoluteness that made math shiver. This was exponentially harder if one held humanity, as Ruby did, and would never be able to fully remove the curse from her list of self proclaimed weaknesses.
Her silver eyes gazed over the pages, not necessarily understanding them, but at least logging them in her mind for later consumption and analysis. She did all of this without realizing the oddity that such a young child should scarcely be able to read and understand dense manuals. There was no internal rationalization required for her odd behavior, as she viewed it as her next step in the destruction of all grimm. She needed a weapon if she wanted to kill anything, and if she wanted a weapon she needed to make one herself.
"I require a weapon." She quoted from a book her mother liked to read her. There was no tears, no sign of sadness within the young girl's eyes. Only a deep and insane motivation that cursed her with the thirst for knowledge of how to defeat her foe.
Summer sat cross legged, looking not at the pages her daughter was reading, but the small form. Ruby had a cup of milk next to her and was wearing her comfy pajamas. She was settling in to work the graveyard shift, illuminating a side of Ruby that Summer had never observed in her genius daughter. Ruby had never had drive, motivation. Her death had given Ruby purpose, a goal. And she would flourish in her role given time and training, of this Summer was certain. That conclusion came not from the dwindling motherly and human side of her mind, but the logical and cold one that perceived the future with an unerring accuracy and cruelty.
Ruby flipped the page, scanning and scratching the surface understanding of how basic weapons were originally made, and how the process had changed over time. The way that different processes had been originally used to forge blades, and how they had improved. At the rate Ruby was plowing through it, it wouldn't be long until she passed on from The History and Art of Blacksmithing to Metals and their uses in weapons; a treatise. Summer had always been fond of the latter book, and had given it to Ruby partially as a joke, and partially so that she might one day read and appreciate the work that went into making a weapon. The different options one had from both a structural and refinement standpoint.
While most Hunters simply made their weapons and only dealt with upkeep, Thorn was not the only weapon that Summer had ever wielded. It was one of thirteen (a ridiculous amount for a Hunter, which usually wielded one perhaps two in their entire life time), among which one she was almost certain Ruby would base her design off of.
It had been hours at this point, where Summer had done nothing but watch her child yawn, Ruby's eyes growing tired and weary. She could scarcely keep her head afloat, as it kept bobbing in the air. Even with Ruby's drive, she knew that it would be pointless to keep going and surrendered to sleep after throwing herself onto her bed.
Summer rose, her mind molded to her new purpose. Only five seconds after touching the covers of her bed, Ruby was sound asleep and breathing peacefully. The lines of concentration on such a young and pure face gave way to lines of increasing discomfort. Even with her rationalization and her mind shielding her from the brunt of her mother's death, there was no hiding within the confines of her own psyche, and she would be forced to confront the reality sooner or later through nightmares.
And this was what Summer had hoped for. She required a nightmare in order to enact her plan and to kill her child's drive and purpose.
A mother's love for their child is endless, especially in Summer's state. She had given up her chance in heaven, her personality, and her values in order to protect the one she held so dear. Not that she would be able to recognize it any more, the goal had been burned into her mind but she no longer knew why, unable to understand the concept of love, but holding it anyway. She would inflict whatever necessary upon her daughter to ensure that she was safe.
And so as spirits of the dead often do, she crossed into the dreams of her daughter and gazed upon the horrid nightmare inflicted upon her by Ruby's own mind.
Summer blinked. She recognized the nightmare. It was one that she remembered vividly, a sort of exception to the rule that memories of dreams fade after a time.
Ruby was in the place of a hero from a story, all grown up and a spitting image of her mother, save her now fully red hair, died the color of blood. Ruby looked down the monster, a formless and hideous beast that could not be understood nor described, for it was all of the evils in the world at once, and she didn't even have a weapon.
Without thinking, Summer said the same phrase that her daughter did, echoing her own words long ago in a distant dream.
"I require a weapon." They said in unison, their voices harmonizing in monotone.
And that was where the dream diverged. In Summer's dream, Thorn had entered her hands. Chains that wrapped around her wrists, forever binding her to the path of a Hunter, attached to a blade and a scythe that would reap the wicked. In the waking world it took her hundreds of attempts to find the right metal, adjust the mechanism so that the chain let out at just the right speed and strength, and to perfect the design of the blades.
Crescent Rose was not what Ruby held, for that would be only her first attempt at perfecting the vision she was about to see and hold. What the future reaper actually held was a blood red scythe, associated with death itself and oozing the blood of innocents and guilty alike. For that was the price a cold-blooded Hunter paid.
Ruby yelped, dropping the scythe like it was on fire. The dream took on a sort of strange look, as if it had been glitched. The little reaper looked upon the crimson blade with only fear, where her psyche had been expecting her to wield the weapon with delight and vigor.
Yet another false assumption of the gods above, who looked in interest at the dream they had implanted in her mind. They twisted the dream, forcing Ruby to speak.
"I require a weapon." She said, but not by her own will this time. It was an attempt to draw her in, to make her believe that picking up the weapon was something of her own volition. Ruby did not fall for it, and Summer took the chance.
"I don't need a weapon." Ruby said, echoing the words Summer forced her to say. The gods leapt out of their seat, looking for the one who had forced such an occurrence and finding the culprit, a specter driven by love and hate.
"I require a weapon." Ruby said, following the gods' command.
"I don't need a weapon." Ruby said, following her mother's demand.
The indescribable monster was in a sort of stuck state, unable to deal with such an event, and thus waited for things to play out as they should.
"I require a weapon." Ruby said, her voice confused as it followed the whim of the gods.
"I don't need a weapon." Ruby said, Summer controlling her out of love and determination to set things right.
"I require a weapon."
"I don't need a weapon."
"I require a weapon."
These two phrases repeated within Ruby's mind, and Summer realized the stalemate she had encountered. This would continue until the dream ended. And if Summer was a cold-blooded Hunter, one that calculated and weighed the odds without an ounce of humanity, she would have accepted such an outcome. For that would be the safe and correct option. Ruby would neither abandon nor follow the path of the hero from such a dream, only wake up confused and annoyed at such a strange dream.
Summer did not consider this option. She took up her daughter's scythe. The blood dripped off the blade onto her hands, staining both them and her white cloak as she adjusted to the new instrument of destruction, finding the best place to hold the weapon.
"Mom?" Ruby asked the white hooded figure in front of her. Her voice was uncertain and nervous, as her eyes trembled and went wide.
Deep down, Summer wanted very badly to turn around. To tell her daughter her mistakes that she had thrust upon her. Her lack of consideration for her future. And beg her not to make the same mistakes she did, the mistake certainly being her vain death for the entertainment of the gods above.
Summer lowered her mask of humanity. She would take on Ruby's responsibility and prove that she would be worthless as a hero, destined to forever be dead weight and nothing but a hindrance, where someone else would always take the lead and finish the job for her.
It was the cruelest thing Summer would ever do. To crush the dreams of her beloved daughter, crush the one thing driving her forward that stopped her utter collapse into despair at her mother's death— but nonetheless save her from a terrible fate.
The scythe whistled through the air, flicking off excess blood that quickly oozed out of every crack in the weapon, and began the process of covering it once again.
The formless monster now had a target and therefore moved. A hideous and grotesque abomination that a normal person would lose their stomach at the sight of. But something that Summer simply viewed as an obstruction.
With a rush of white rose petals, one swift movement, and an exhale, the monster was downed with a single blow. It evaporated back into nothingness, not even having the chance to be confused about its sudden death.
Summer looked out of the corner of her eye at her daughter. She expected dejectedness, despair, distraughtness. Instead she found only determination in her daughter's expression.
Ruby not had looked at the scene where her mother had slain the monster for her in a moment of weakness as something to be ashamed of, but rather as an indication of what she might eventually be.
These emotions were instead reflected onto Summer at the realization that she had failed and fallen into the god's trap. She had only strengthened her daughter's conviction, cut away at the brush and undergrowth covering the path of the Hunter and blazing a trail for her.
With a scream of rage and a slam of the scythe into the incorporeal ground, the dream faded into nothingness, just as the monster had.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed. Always open to criticism.
