[X] No, she needed to do this now. If she makes excuses now, she'll keep making excuses. Get it over with.
Standing in front of the door to the house, Yang sighed.
No point putting this off any further. She needed to have a talk with Ruby sooner or later, and if she delayed again now, who was to say she wouldn't find an excuse later?
Besides, she was being paranoid. This wouldn't take long. Just talk to Ruby for a bit, confirm everything's fine, go to bed like a champion.
Simple enough.
Opening the door in front of her, Yang stepped in, and heard Ruby walking in behind her.
"Hey, what did Dad say to do with the dog again?" Yang asked.
"Put him out the back." Ruby nodded. "Hold on, I'll just do that quickly before I go to bed."
Ruby leaned down and clicked her fingers to make sure Zwei was paying attention, then led the dog inside and through the house, towards the back door. Yang watched her walk off for a moment, before walking to the base of the stairs, and leaning against it.
What was she even supposed to say here? She wasn't sure. She didn't want to make it seem like something was wrong on her end, but at the same time, she wanted to emphasis that she wanted to make sure everything was okay on both ends.
She just didn't know what to say.
...Still, she had to try, didn't she? If there was a problem- Which there probably wasn't, but if- Then Yang wanted to nip it in the bud before it caused anything else. The little talk to Miltia before the Fight Club had made it abundantly clear that she wasn't coping well, even if she denied it, and, well...
Yang hadn't forgotten, what her dad was like back when she was a kid. She tried not to think about it, but he'd been kind of distant for years. Even with Ruby around, he always let people do their own things. It hadn't been up until Yang nearly messed up looking for her mother that he'd changed, and even if that was years ago, Yang didn't want Ruby feeling the same way Yang had back then.
Ruby didn't have enough people she could look up to. Taiyang had a tendency to be distant, Qrow kept disappearing, and that just left Yang to be someone to look out for her. That was the way it'd been in...
Well, forever.
...She was just getting paranoid. It was fine. Everything was fine. She'd just talk to Ruby, confirm everything is fine, laugh it off, and it'd be fine. Nothing to worry about.
Yang heard a door closing a bit away, and waited a moment. Before long, Ruby stepped around the corner, and nearly bumped into Yang before the younger sister noticed the older sister standing in the way of the stairs.
"...Yang?" Ruby asked. "You're still up?"
Yang thought for a moment, then sighed. She wasn't good with just talking. She'd just go ahead and see how it went.
"Just wanted to have a bit of a talk." Yang tried. "I was talking to Miltia a bit earlier, and it got me thinking. Mind if we talk for a moment?"
Ruby's eyes flicked up the stairs for a moment, before returning to Yang. "...Yeah, okay."
Stretching a bit, Yang yawned, and walked over to the nearby table. She sat on a chair and rested against a table, noting how odd it felt for her elbow to lean against the wood with Four's pain blocking trick thingy. She couldn't feel any friction, texture or design to it. Like she was just touching something that had no real qualities to it.
She didn't know how to think of it any better than that.
"What did you want to talk about?" Ruby asked, looking a bit nervous. Was she worried that Yang would have some bad news? Given what had happened, she wouldn't blame Ruby for that...
"Just wanted to make sure everything was okay." Yang replied. "Miltia, she... Well, apparently she and her sister had a disagreement recently, and it occurred to me that we hadn't talked in a while. Not about anything important. So I just wanted to make sure everything was okay, there was nothing you needed to get off your chest or anything."
Ruby looked at Yang for a moment, and Yang suddenly felt very stupid. No, of course Ruby didn't care about anything, she was Ruby, she was understanding enough to understand that Yang needed to get stronger to look after her, she didn't need to-
"Well..." Ruby began, cutting off Yang's train of thought before trailing off. "It's just..."
Yang watched Ruby, not sure what to think. Was she about to reveal some sort of problem? Was she just getting embarrassed that Yang tried to talk about something so important and she didn't have anything to say?
Ruby took a breath, and eventually spoke. "Yang, don't take this the wrong way please, but... Aren't you pushing yourself too much?"
Yang froze, as she looked at Ruby. Her brain stopped, as she tried to divine what Ruby could possibly mean with her words.
"It's just..." Ruby continued. "Ever since we got back from Mountain Glenn, you've been kind of... Trying too hard."
Trying too hard? How do you try too hard? That's not how things worked. You try your hardest at the important things, you can't try too hard to-
"I know you're just worried." Ruby said. "But... At school, you hover over me, barely talk to other people, and then barely talk to me there. You go out each night. And then... There's a crime in progress and you drop what should be a fun day to go interfere, go too far, end up going to hospital and..."
She trailed off, before picking up again. "Are you okay, Yang?"
Yang stared for a moment, before forcing herself to smile. "Is that all, Ruby? She tried to dismiss it. "Don't worry, I'm-"
"Are you?" Ruby asked. "Fine, I mean? You say you're okay, but you can't just keep doing this. You didn't get hurt bad in the fight, but what if you did? What if you do next time? Why did you have to fight in the first place? Why chase after the girl with the Dust crystals?"
"Because it was the right thing to do." Yang replied, frowning. "You would have done the sa-"
"Ren told me." Ruby declared, and Yang went silent.
The silence hung in the air for a moment, before Ruby continued.
"He was looking for you today. I went down to the gym in the city to try and practice a bit, and he was looking for you there. He told me how bad it was, Yang. He told me they had to knock you out to make you stop."
Yang took in a shuddering breath, before gulping and replying. "He's... That's an exaggeration-"
"Is it?" Ruby asked. "I... I didn't tell Dad because I didn't want him to worry, but Yang, please, don't make this harder."
"Why does it matter?" Yang asked. "Okay, maybe I kept going when I should have stopped, lost my temper when that girl broke my arm-"
"What happened to your cane when you went out to talk to Miltia, Yang?" Ruby asked.
Yang winced, but recovered quickly. "I don't know what you mea-"
"They're not the same." Ruby interrupted. "You went out with one, came back with a similar one. Different, but similar. Didn't talk about it. I almost thought I imagined it, until you reacted like that."
Yang clenched her hand under the table for a moment.
Damn it, damn it, she'd slipped up. Ruby was being worried about her and pressing her on things that would worry her more and Yang didn't know how to make her stop-
"Ren said it was like you needed a win." Ruby continued. "Is that what this is about? You lost to Dito, so now you need to win?"
"I-" Yang realised after a moment that she was raising her voice, so she took a breath to calm down. "...Ruby, if you're worried because he beat me-"
"You only fought him because he and Five had kidnapped me in the first place." Ruby continued. "I'm allowed to worry."
"Ruby, it's not your faul-"
"Then why are you acting like this?" Ruby asked. She looked up from the table, looking Yang in the eye, and the older girl suddenly realised that her eyes were starting to water. "I... I'm not an idiot, Yang. You nearly die trying to save me, then you get super protective and keep getting into fights like this? You're going to get yourself hurt over me!"
"It's fine!" Yang insisted, cursing herself. Ruby thought it was her fault? Yang didn't want that. Yang didn't want that at all. She was supposed to make Ruby feel safe and happy, not like she was making things worse.
"When was the last time you tried to look for your mum, Yang?" Ruby asked suddenly.
The question hit Yang like a punch to the stomach. "...What-"
"Dad told me you were still looking." Ruby noted. "You'd check every once in a while, trying to find a new lead. You have a picture, or something. When was the last time you even thought about trying to find her?"
...It had been a while, but that didn't mean anything.
"Why does that matter?" Yang asked. "I put that aside until I could prote-"
And suddenly, Yang realised what she was saying.
"Until you could protect me?" Ruby asked, finishing Yang's statement. "See? You're going too far. You... You got hurt and now you're trying to go too far in the other direction to make up for it."
"I'm trying to learn from my mistake." Yang corrected, accepting that she'd lost that ground. "That's what people do, Ruby. They make a mistake, they try not to make it again. Like-"
"Like when Uncle Qrow had to save us when we were small?" Ruby asked, her voice soft. "When you dragged me with you to look for your mother?"
Yang's hand clenched reflexively. "What are you-"
"You apologised, Yang." Ruby continued. "You said you didn't mean anything bad, remember? You just focused on that one thing and nearly got us killed over it."
"I know, I messed up, but-"
"And now you're doing it again!" Ruby nearly shouted. "You... You're focusing too much, thinking about how you lost, thinking you need to be better, and you're ignoring the dangers! It's the same thing all over again!"
Like so much of this conversation, hearing Ruby say those words was like a knife through Yang's heart. "I-"
Ruby banged the table with her fist, a teardrop landing beside it a moment later. "I don't want to see you get hurt, Yang." She continued. "And you're doing it because of me. You're tearing yourself apart because I'm not good enough and I need protection."
Yang pushed away from the table, standing from her chair in the process. "Ruby, that's not true-"
The red cloaked girl's hand trembled. "Please, Yang... This isn't helping. I know, you're... You're just trying to be there for me, but you're not, you're out of reach and you won't listen to me and it's been this long before you even let me try to help you, and you're just trying to brush it off like it's n-nothing..."
She made a sound that sounded like a sob, before she tried to take a breath. Tried to calm herself. Tried to be strong.
For Yang.
That's...
That's not how it's supposed to work. The big sister is supposed to be strong for the little sister, not the other way around. The little sister's supposed to trust the big sister enough to not have to be strong, to just let it out and not hide the fact that they're crying and Ruby was crying and it was all because Yang was too stupid too terrible to pay attention, she...
...Ruby was right, wasn't she? She'd made the same mistakes all over again.
Back on that day, years ago, when Yang had tried to look for clues about her mother...
She was supposed to look after Ruby then, but she'd been too blind. All she could focus on was her mother, and the chance that she'd be able to help her father pay may attention. And then the two of them nearly died for it, would have died if it wasn't for Uncle Qrow, and Yang had to cope with the fact that she'd nearly gotten Ruby killed when she was supposed to be looking out for her.
She had promised, hadn't she? Not to make that same mistake again. To pay attention, look after Ruby, care for her like her dad was never able to, be the one person she could rely on. And then what?
Yang makes a mistake and tries to learn from it and ends up making Ruby feel like this when she was just trying to make things better.
All because she'd been so focused on being strong enough to care for Ruby, that she completely forgot to actually care for Ruby.
And now this was happening. One of the worst situations Yang could end up finding herself in. Ruby, in front of her, in tears, trying her best to hold it together because she didn't trust Yang to let it out, because she was like this because Yang had acted like she had.
Some big sister she was.
[X] ...She'd caused this. She'd messed up. It was on her to try and start making things better. Comfort her.
[X] ...Ruby deserved better than this. Than having a big sister who kept doing this to her. Just leave.