The day had already been decades long, but somehow it was just shy of one in the afternoon according to her phone. Her phone was laughing at her. Time was laughing at her. Angrily, she shoved her phone back into her satchel before leaning forward and putting her head in her hands. But through the cloth folds of her bag, the muffled laughter still continued to reach her ears. It taunted her, made a mockery of her very existence. Time was not her friend. Every device that played timekeeper joined in at her expense. First snickering, then they all opened their nonexistent mouths in full awareness of the joke. They guffawed. She was the joke. "Stop!" She yelled her plea to any machine that might have mercy on her, but to no avail. They were all laughing at her.

"Weiss?"

'Peabody Avenue. Connecting route: 87.'

She jumped up before the bus came to a complete stop and quickly alighted as soon as the door opened and granted her passage from th transit demon that had grown to be nearly unbearable. Qrow's sat relatively in front of her, ever the landmark most familiar to her, but right she went toward her destination: home. She walked as briskly as she was able toward it, though a lifetime still seemed to separate her from her refuge, her brisk walk more a hapless amble restricted by the sheer pressure from the contents of her head.

"Weiss!"

"Go home, Ruby," she bit in response. Everything was overloading her senses: the mild heat was too hot, the few cars were too loud and too many, her formless thoughts fired too frequently, and every address she received sent invisible tendrils of jagged stimuli along every nerve. It was making her sick to her stomach.

"I already told you, I'm not going home Weiss." Ruby was just behind her, yet her voice sounded far away. One hundred and five, one hundred and eight fenceposts on the first block toward her home.

"Ruby." She stressed her name in irritation. She wasn't sure if she truly wanted her to go, but she felt as though she almost needed her to leave. Something in the very pit of her stomach spoke on familiarity, and beneath the emotional cacophony that plagued her, a fearful feeling was starting to burn anxious brands into her. She needed distance.

"I told you I wouldn't let you be alone and afraid today!" She stopped and turned, meeting Ruby's eyes for the first time since they left the doctor's office. Gunmetal, soft and adamant. "You didn't get the best news and I can see it's bothering you." Gunmetal, gentle and pure.

"I don't need you to tell me how I feel." She turned away from her, looking right before she crossed the road, then looking left. But not left enough. The car that approached the crosswalk had certainly noticed her telegraphed movements to cross as it honked at her before she did so. She jumped and halted, the driver giving her a confused look as he drove cautiously across the intersection.

"Weiss!" Ruby was upon her, staring at her with wide eyes that bore an expression she couldn't read.

"I'm fine." Her rigidity waned. "I didn't look far enough left. Effectively blind, remember?" With that biting comment, she made her way to the other side, Ruby keeping pace shoulder to shoulder with her.

"Hold my hand," Ruby said once they made it to the other side, attempting to grab Weiss' hand before it was utterly rejected.

"I don't need to hold your hand!"

"But I want to hold yours. Please?" Ruby's voice was soft and sincere with honest, innocent coercion lining her request. Gunmetal, soft and warm. Ruby held her hand out to her, tenderly giving her the courtesy of grabbing her hand or not. The wedge in her mind that was being driven between her and the world stopped an attempt there. She reached for Ruby's hand, bridging an infernal gap as their fingers laced and their palms touched. That familiar ease steadied the vibrating intensity that churned the fabric of her soul as much as it was presently able and allowed her friend's words restricted passage. "Back to your house, yeah?"

"Yes.." It was hard, continuing to walk. She wasn't tired, quite the opposite really, but something in her was exhausted beyond remedy. Perhaps her lack of sleep for the past four days was catching up to her in the cruelest of ways. Everything in and of her was arrested. Everything save for the stampede of wild thought forms she was convinced would never coagulate. If there was a wound in her head that they could have torn through, she would have bled out long ago. The circus made her want to submit. The circus never ended and she was in dire need of rest, in dire need of a sleep that may never come. Is it ever over?

"Let's go inside," came Ruby's voice. They were standing at her door. Time slipped her and refuge was here. The anxious brands ached on her and she pulled her hand from Ruby's in favor of seeking out her keys. She needed distance. Two clicks and the cool from inside greeted her. She shivered and kicked her shoes from her feet. She was a few steps into the large common space and her eyes locked onto the tall, glass cabinet that held the various liquors Winter had amassed over time. Now. She needed a drink now. A direct march to the cabinet and she was trying to dismantle the child lock with her bare hands, but was unsuccessful in her attempt. She turned and descended upon the first thing that registered in her vision as something that would get the job done.

"Weiss, I don't think that's the best idea." She didn't hear Ruby at all. She was already upon the cabinet with the wooden partition that was used for mail and other miscellany. The glass instantly shattered when the partition made contact with it. "Weiss.." She was already reaching through the jagged portal that sang her sweet songs of reprieve, unconcerned with the shallow cuts the portal's teeth dragged into her forearm as she retrieved a bottle to quench her sudden mental thirst. "Weiss, please talk to me."

"Ruby.. just sit with me." Two glasses now sat on the island filled with a ten year old brandy. Ruby sat across from her silently, politely refusing the glass that was slid toward her as she sat. Weiss downed it immediately after it was rejected. "There's water and juice in the fridge if you prefer something else." She didn't want to be alone.

"Weiss, you can talk to me." She looked up to meet gunmetal, pleading yet hesitant.

"I should have expected as much," she laughed before she drank the contents of her own glass, refilling it before she continued. "I did expect as much, but I made the mistake of entertaining the smallest unit of hope. I was foolish. I deserve as much.." She laughed again to spite herself.

"Why do you think you deserve this?"

Tears welled in her eyes, and blood smeared across the surface of the island as she brought her hand to her head and raked it through her hair with a heavy sigh. Anger was boiling again. She thought of her brother. "Because I'm the child. I'm the child. I'm the child." Silence, eerie and full. She took another, smaller drink from her glass and lowered her head again to hide the tears that rolled down her cheeks as she clenched her eyes shut. Blood continued to bead from her arm.

"Weiss, your arm.."

"Yes, my arm. My arm—" She stared at the accidental Rorschach her blood painted, obscure and blurry from her liquid and mismatched vision. The symmetry was repugnant and beautiful.

"Can I take care of it for you?"

"If you so desire," she said taking another drink. "The first aid kit is in that cabinet." A lethargic point before her arm fell to the island. She registered very little of Ruby's movements away from and then back to the counter. Her head still hung in haunted shame, but swam with the familiar breaststroke of slight inebriation. A butterfly of sorts fell into the pit of her stomach. Something about everything hit her with a deadened pang of familiarity.

"Here," Ruby gently redirected her bloodied arm toward her. "This is going to sting a bit okay?" She remained silent. She didn't so much as flinch when Ruby pressed the disinfecting wipe to her cuts. She was elsewhere, or nowhere, lost in the fresh wave of firing synapses that assaulted her. She clenched her eyes shut and knitted her brows together, bringing her free hand to her head and pressing her fingers roughly into her scalp. The pressure in her head. She needed relief and somehow maybe forcing burr holes into her skull would alleviate some of this pressure. Futility. She snatched her arm from Ruby and stood, downing the remainder of her drink before she began to walk small, lost circles around and around and around. No relief. Something began its decent from her nose. Something warm, something familiar. She opened her eyes to see red dotting the floor in increasing increments.

"Goddamnit!" Her yell was half laughed, half sobbed before she snatched her glass up and threw it into the wall opposite the island. The rage that was erupting was suddenly staunched as her eyes locked onto Ruby who sat not too far from the path of the now shattered projectile. Gunmetal, pale and terrified.

"Weiss.." Ruby's voice was small a sounded on the verge of tears. Weiss stared at her, eyes wide as if she were seeing her for the first time. Ruby looked so scared and Weiss was the terror that made it so.

"Goddamnit Ruby, please just leave." She was walking her lost circles again, heart hammering in her chest. In those pale, terrified eyes there was no more understanding. She did that. She brought her hand to her face, covering it in shame.

"Weiss, I can't.."

"You can!" She wiped her nose on her sleeve, blood marring the yellow of her shirt and tearing at the threads still holding her together. "Fuck!" The other glass was shattered against a distant wall amidst her elongated scream. And then she stopped, every movement halted with the forlorn realization she just made. She felt naked, more than naked, as though something in and about her was laid bare and vulnerable to the scrutiny of any eye present or otherwise.

"Weiss.." that uncharacteristically small voice again. "I don't know what to do.." Ruby was crying. And she was the cause. What was there to do? She was inflicting herself on another, hurting someone who deserved nothing of what she was being burdened with. She leaned precariously over, bring her head to her hands before she fell against the wall and slid to the floor as she was wracked with subtle sobs. She brought her knees to her chest. She wanted to hide. She tried to collapse in on herself like a star damned to self-destruction, her cries even restricted as she tried to hide everything about her from the world. Eternities seemed to be passing by every instant. Universes died and were reborn around her and she just sat, rocking tighter shut as the world rushed indifferently by. Surely she'd succumb to the binds of her half-life soon. Suddenly, she was wrapped in a grounding embrace. A part of the world stopped for her, defiant against the indifference the cosmos had toward her to hold her even tighter, rose scented perhaps, and firm.

"Tell me anything." Ruby was crying still. "Tell me anything I can do." She released her knees, sobbing still, and wrapped her arms around this piece of the universe that cared to buoy her from the undercurrents that swept her further down. "I can't leave even if you want me to. Everything is telling me that I shouldn't so please, tell me anything that I can do."

My burden.

Your burden.

"Winter," she sobbed. A tether. Her continuity. She reached clumsily into her satchel still strung around her for her phone. Her hands were terribly unsteady. A keen and knowing Ruby steadied her hand by wrapping hers around her phone as she held it. Terror claimed her as she pressed the call button and brought it to her ear. The line connected after two rings. She didn't wait for her sister's greeting before she called out to her in pained necessity. "Winter.."

"Weiss," Winter's tone indicated that she knew something was terribly wrong.

"I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry." And she was. Every building block that made up her life knew that she was burdening everyone she loved and cared about. She repeated her apology.

"Weiss, what's wrong? Are you alright?" Her sobs drifted hauntingly over the line, filled with shame and displaced terror. There was nothing she could say other than endless apologies. "Weiss, please talk to me. Please tell me what's wrong?" Winter's voice was laced with fear, yet controlled in her endeavor to ascertain her sister's present state.

"I can't," she sobbed. "I don't know what's wrong. I don't know what's wrong. Again, again, again.." Everything about her present state was heavier than it had ever been. She couldn't bear it. "Please come home. Just, please come home, please.." Desperation.

"I'm coming home, Weiss. I'm on my way, I promise." Sound and earnest. "Are you alone? If you are, please call Whitley to be with you until I get there. I'll be there in an hour. Please?"

"He wouldn't come if I was alone! I know he wouldn't.."

"Who is with you, Weiss?"

"Ruby." Ruby was still crouched beside her and holding her firmly, a silent pillar helping to stave off her descent into madness.

"Can she stay with you until I get there?"

"Yes." She was still crying harder than she ever had in her recent past.

"Is it alright if I speak with her briefly."

"Yes." She clumsily pulled the phone from her ear and held it towards her friend. After a confused moment, Ruby received the phone and brought it to her ear.

"Hello?" Ruby's voice was no longer as small as it was before, but it still carried the familiar elements of someone who had recently been afraid and crying. Another sob was wringed from her throat as she brought her hand to her head. "Yes." Nothing would solidify in her mind, but she desperately continued to try to bring order to herself. She hardly knew where she was and the desire for rest was a dangerous pull that threatened to drag her into the darkest corners of her overcrowded mind. "I understand. I will." She barely registered Ruby gesturing the phone back to her before she received it in slow and clumsy acceptance.

"Winter?"

"I'm here Weiss, I'm here. And I'm on my way, I promise. I'll be there soon."

"I don't feel well," she heaved, suddenly more exhausted that she ever thought she could be. "I don't feel well at all.."

"I know," Winter's voice broke slightly. "I know. It's going to be okay, Weiss. You're going to be okay." Her tears replenished themselves. She sat the phone on the floor beside her, unable to maintain any of the strength that allowed her to hold herself together and function enough to speak to her sister. Sick began to writhe in her stomach. She heaved herself up and away from her phone, away from Ruby's arms. She stumbled to the island and took a large swig of brandy from the bottle. Something needed to be drowned away. Something, be it the terminal disarray that was tearing her loudly, yet silently apart, or her very existence that this disarray had sewn itself into the seams of. The brown flush cleansed her of nothing and was never poised to stay down. She collapsed over the kitchen sink and vomited the bitter and slim contents of her stomach. She shivered from the act and sparse drops of red dotted the sink. She was held again and small circles were being rubbed into her back as she used a hand to bring water to her face.

"I need an hour." Water fell silently from her face, some droplets pink in hue. "I need to drown an hour. I.. I just need to make it an hour.."

"If you could listen to any album right now, what would it be?" What a lovely dear she was. In a flash of clarity so brief it may as well have been a figment of her imagination, she knew this girl was to be cherished. Everything about Ruby that had urged her to push the girl away was everything that was now telling her to let her into the purgatory that was devouring her. She grasped that seemingly ephemeral fragment with everything she cold muster, planted it, and gave it real life.

"It would be," her voice came out in strained pants, "July Flame. Laura Veirs.." The music was playing before she knew it and she was seated on the floor in front of the sink with Ruby tending to her cuts.

I can see your tracks, but I won't follow them.

I'll just hope for rain. Or some kind of crazy wind

to erase them and chase them into oblivion.

Time passed them over, a construct in their burrow of stillness. The only thing that propelled them forward was the continuing progression of the music. She was blank and empty, yet full. The anguish that filled and stilled her marked its place as the absence of, a void that filled her completely as it left her bereft of something to hold on to. But the presence of roses from the body next to hers and the hand that never left her own grounded her. So much so that if it wasn't there, she would have chosen to go away by now, forever, to escape this wretched vacancy that seemed to weigh as much as a world on its own.

Am I going, am I going up in smoke?

Am I going, am I going up in smoke?

Centipedes of varying stimuli crawled tiny, make-shift pathways through her, trying to get a rise out of her, but she was terribly vacant. She laughed at what she saw of herself in a brief vision. Tears rolled steadily down her cheeks. She had no rise, only fall, and unwanted rushing waves of syncopated thought crimes. A soft moan of abstract pain escaped her lips.

Will you evermore tie up my hair with velvet bows?

Will you evermore pull out the splinters from my toes?

I don't think so.

"此処いるよ". The gentle stroke from Ruby's hand and that gentle mantra she repeated didn't go unnoticed. It was the anchor she told Winter she didn't have that night so akin to this. Her head rested on Ruby's shoulder now. She didn't know how long they had been sitting that way, but the proximity, the touch brought her endless comfort. Her mind's pace was more merciful now, though only minimally courteous. She felt tired, as though she could sleep. She may have been already dozing, but she was so acutely aware of Ruby's continued presence that a certain focus for it lit a dull torch in her darkened mind. She reached towards it desperately with a weak squeeze of her hand thatshe could gather enough vague strength to give. She had only this vague strength to give in the absence of her ability to resist. This vague strength was only her ability to remain. She could remain. For her, for Winter. She felt terribly ill.

I wanted to make something pure.

An emerald field from steer manure.

A wide-eyed child in a moonlit room,

make something good.

I wanted to make something built to last.

A bottled ship with a golden mast.

And through the squall, the course stays true.

Make something good.

"Weiss.." She felt hands on her: one in her left, another on her arm, and two on her face. She let another soft moan of abstract pain slip from her mouth. Her head hurt, and yet it didn't. It wasn't a physical pain. If it had been she'd surely have cried out by now. But it was there, accosting her cyclically with abandon, a specter of an unknown world. A kiss to the forehead before a hand pushed away her bangs as though checking for a fever. She heaved her eyes barely open, the dual apparitions before her filling her with a familiar warmth. She willed herself from Ruby's shoulder and forward, reaching out just barely as she was only able to, and arms enveloped her, strong and binding. She didn't have the strength to return the embrace. A damn broke somewhere, and Winter was suddenly crying.

"I don't feel well, Winter. I.." She shivered and clutched weakly at the front of her sister's uniform jacket. The pain she felt she couldn't feel and yet here she was, feeling it still. It was unbearable. So full of emptiness, how was she not collapsing in on herself? How was she not bloated, eyes bulging and tongue swollen? "I'm sorry." Her tears fell now as she buried her head into Winter's shoulder. Such exhaustion.

"You have nothing to apologize for, Weiss." Winter's voice was still broken with emotion. "I'm sorry I never saw that you needed help, sorry I didn't see sooner. I'm so sorry.." Winter removed one of her arms from around her to reach for something at her side before bringing it to her ear. "I need an ambulance at 4128 N. Peabody Avenue." She registered the words, but there was no reaction in her. "I believe my sister is having a bi-polar episode, and I'm afraid—" Was there a name to put to it now, this disarray? Something warm started from her nose again for the third time. Through a bleary eye she saw red now dotting her sister's uniform and she knew it would be hard to get the jagged red stains out of the white fabric. Her vision darkened and blurred. She had exhausted that vague strength, that strength to remain. She heaved a sigh as her grasp on Winter's uniform front loosened, but didn't fall. The darkness tempted her and she released a ledge, falling into temptation as unconsciousness warmly enveloped her in her entirety, the warmth of touch and the scent of roses the last thing to vacate her senses before she went.

….

Author's Notes:

Thank you for reading and please look forward to more, Ivel.