The snowflake was finished. Well the shape of it was finished. Ruby still had to paint it and add more details. She was thinking about blue and white tones. It was pretty good, if she did say so herself. She hoped Weiss liked it. She hoped she didn't have to admit to Weiss how she made it like only a couple days after they met. But mostly she hoped Weiss liked it. She didn't know how or why, but to her, it perfectly represented Weiss. All pointed edges, sharp and deadly and beautiful, but with intricate details and shapes interlaced in it. It was Weiss, plain and simple.
Ruby pulled out the drawer at her bench, taking out the rose she'd been carving a couple weeks ago. It was rudimentary, the outlines of a rose clear and visible, but not yet up to her satisfaction. She turned it over and over in her hands as her mind worked out how best to proceed.
She flipped her notebook over to the pages she'd sketched out the rose designs. The pages were full of variations, the detailing all different in their own ways. She had narrowed it down to a couple ones that really spoke to her.
She based it off an old brooch that her mom had always used to wear. She didn't know where it was anymore, but Ruby remembered the silver gleaming off the sunlight as she played with her mom in the backyard. She couldn't bring up the exact details, try as she might, but with each sketch she drew, more and more came back to her. The slight curves in the petals, the shape of the center of the rose. Her mom's smile, the dip of her chin as she looked down at Ruby. Her soft hands, her gentle voice.
Ruby sighed, wishing she could talk to someone about all of this. She couldn't talk to her dad, couldn't put him through all that pain again. She knew Summer Rose wasn't his first love. Uncle Qrow had told them as much. Raven Branwen was... somewhere. She didn't know where. And if they knew, they weren't telling her.
And Yang... well, even Yang had her limits. Some days Ruby could see the frayed edges, the cracks the appeared here and there. Yang was barely older than Ruby, and she didn't deserve to always be the adult of the household. For a while after their mom's death, Yang had always been the one to keep it all together. Tai had buried himself in his grief, either consuming himself in work, or sequestering himself away from everyone else, locking the door and not answering when Ruby and Yang came knocking. Ruby remembered those days, even as young as she was, where Yang had gotten a stool and was leaning precariously over the stove, cooking breakfast for herself and Ruby. It was why she was glad that Blake came around when she did. Meeting Blake had done a lot to repair the fracture in their household that came with Summer's death. Yang finally had someone to lean on, to support her when she couldn't let anyone else do it.
Ruby continued running her hands over the small sculpture, almost willing the shapes and cuts to come to her, reveal themselves in the smooth wood. A secret for her, only her. Some great divine thing from above, bringing itself to her because she deserved it. Because she wanted it to.
The bell rang, and Ruby started packing her workstation up, keeping all the tools back in their appropriate racks and slots, because she wasn't a damned animal.
She grabbed her bag and started walking out of school, her classes done for the day.
Yang texted her, letting her know that she was staying in school for a while to actually work on their history project 'for realzies this time'. Ruby replied with a winky face emoji.
Then she bumped into tall, lanky and blonde.
Jaune Arc, Beacon High's resident goofball. He turned around to apologize, which was a very Jaune move. To be fair, Ruby would probably have done the same, but Jaune was, as he had described himself once to Ruby, 'the kind of guy you could pour soup into my lap and I'd probably still apologize to you'. Ruby had laughed at that.
She liked him, though. Behind all of it, Jaune was a kind, determined guy. He was the best kind of friend to have, the kind that cared, genuinely cared about you. He was the first real non-Yang-or-Blake friend she had made in Beacon. He also felt himself as a bit of an outsider, had always been the one to float all around but never found anyone to attach himself to. He reached out to Ruby when she was at a real low point, socially speaking, and Ruby had seen the part of him that most people never thought to look for.
"Sor- oh. Hey, Ruby," Jaune rubbed the back of his neck, smiling. Ruby gave him a quick wave.
"Heya, Jaune," she rocked back and forth on her heels, ever a ball of energy.
"Oh, hey, actually what are you doing right now?" Jaune's eyes suddenly widened. Ruby tilted her head, shrugging.
"Just about heading home, why?"
"I- um, I need your help with something. Or I guess I just wanted to ask you about some stuff?" he rubbed his arm sheepishly, a blush appearing on his cheeks as he looked at the ground, avoiding Ruby's stare.
"Uh, okay. What is it?" Ruby tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Jaune nervous looked left and right down the halls, then motioned for Ruby to follow him. He stepped quickly into an empty classroom. Ruby was, well, either she was about to find out something really scandalous or she was going to have to reject Jaune, and she wasn't very much looking forward to either one of those scenarios. Jaune waited for her to step in before he shut the door.
"Okay so, what I needed to talk to you about was- um," he nervously paced back and forth as Ruby just looked on patiently. "The thing. That I, Jaune Arc, was going to ask you, you being Ruby Rose, is-"
"Just spit it out Jaune!" Ruby was about a hair away from tearing her hair out listening to him babble. God, was this what it was like when she was stumbling on her words? She suddenly felt really sorry for Weiss.
"How do I ask Pyrrha out?!" he half-shouted, then immediately covered his mouth with his hands. Ruby gasped, stars in her eyes. No way!
"You like Pyrrha?" Ruby pointed at him. Jaune nodded mutely.
"Pyrrha?" she asked again.
He nodded again.
"Pyrrha Nikos?" Ruby couldn't believe it.
He furrowed his brows.
"The one that goes to Beacon High School, right, Pyrrha Nikos?"
Jaune groaned, now covering his face.
"Yes, okay! Quit it, Ruby!" Jaune exclaimed. Ruby held her hands out placatingly. She took a deep breath, then two. Then she focused back up on Jaune, though the smile never left her face the entire time.
"I think that's really sweet, Jaune," Ruby started off.
"But she's like... way, way, like crazy out of my league, right?" Jaune interrupted her.
"Oh, no. No, yeah. Hundred percent," Ruby nodded vigorously. Jaune groaned again, sinking into a chair. "Like, she's suuuuuper out of your league, Jaune."
"Alright, you don't have to put so much mustard on that," he shot her a scowl.
"Sorry," Ruby chuckled sheepishly.
"So, what, I really have like no chance in hell with her?" Jaune raised his head to look at Ruby, a grimace on his face.
"Well I didn't say that," Ruby walked over to Jaune, putting a hand on his shoulder. He looked at her expectantly.
"What do you mean?" he asked, voice half full of hope. Ruby rubbed her chin.
"You're a good guy, Jaune. A genuinely good guy, and you're kind and compassionate and funny, and I'm sure Pyrrha hasn't gotten to see that side of you yet, right? So just show her that?" Ruby leaned against a desk, half shrugging.
There was a moment of silence.
"You think I'm funny?" Jaune asked, a smirk on his face, smugness written all over. Ruby blew a raspberry at him.
"Shut up. You're funny in, like, a super dorky way. People dig that," Ruby waved him off.
"Oh, said the king of the actual dorks," Jaune pointed at her, a laugh bubbling up in his throat. Ruby scowled at him this time. She was not a dork, despite literally all evidence to the contrary.
"I am the coolest kid on the block, okay," she poked his shoulder. They both laughed.
"So do you actually think it might work?" Jaune asked once they recovered from their laughing fit.
"It's worth a try, Jaune. Better to shoot your shot than to not have a shot to shooted, right?"
"Uh, yes?"
"That's the spirit. Rise up, king," Ruby slapped him on the back. Jaune chuckled. "Just try to be you. Report back to me in a couple days, we'll see where you're at."
"Okay. Hey, thank you Ruby. I know you're like, 12 but I like talking to you about all these things. You're really easy to talk to," Jaune lightly punched her shoulder.
"I'm 13, but, anytime Jaune," she waved to him as she walked away.
Free from distractions, she retrieved her headphones from her bag, plugging it into her phone. She turned on music, her sweet bliss away from the world. She put her hood up as she walked down the steps of the school, out onto the street.
The vast winter wonderland of suburban Vale stretched out before her. The residents had already begun putting up decorations. Wreaths, fairy lights and baubles lined the houses, on and on and on down the street. She had always loved Christmas, a time for family to come together. Presents and hot chocolate and snowball fights, all that stereotypical cheesy Christmas stuff, Ruby was a sucker for all of it. Call her a sap, she didn't care. Ruby was no grinch, that much was sure.
Vaguely, she wondered when Uncle Qrow was coming back. Wondered if he even would this year. He had missed last year, citing some work business he had to attend to. It had made Yang and Ruby realize that, actually they had no clue what their uncle did for a living. They had asked their father, and all he deigned to say was that he was a private investigator of sorts.
Not that it mattered much. Qrow was still her favourite uncle, even if he was her only uncle. It was always a treat when he came around. It made their family feel fuller, a little more complete. She knew Tai always loved it, the love the two men had for each other was always clear as day. It made sense, they were all friends when they were younger. Qrow, Tai, Summer and Raven. Ruby had seen the photo, same as Yang. All four of them together, smiling at the camera. It was hidden, behind another photo in a worn wooden frame. But it was there.
Sometimes Ruby understood why her dad didn't really talk about all of that stuff. It probably wasn't easy losing two great loves. Ruby wouldn't know how to feel if she had two people she loved leave her either.
She sighed, rounding into her yard. There was that big downside about Christmas. It was a great time for family, but sometimes it reminded her of what big holes there were in her family.
Ruby entered her house, and it was silent. She waited for a moment to see if something would fill that silence. Briefly she wondered if anything could ever fill the silence. Or if the silence was just something that you had to learn to live with, forever and ever. A weight you had to drag around all the time, walking around in school, getting on buses, going to movies, always with that weight on you. It got easier, after a while, to drag that weight along, but it was always still there. Ruby was leaning more and more towards the thinking that it would never disappear.
She shut the door behind her and sighed. Just one of those things. She left her bag on the dining room table before she flopped herself down on the couch in the living room. Yeah, sure, homework and yada yada yada, but that all could wait. Her mind felt too full, too many thoughts swirling and bubbling, each one wanting to burst out of her head.
So she did what she always did when she had too much on her mind: Ruby baked cookies.
It used to be her mom's thing. Cookies were, like, the solution to every problem she ever had. Yeah sure, when Ruby was 4, all her problems were indeed cookie-level problems. But she maintained that there was no situation that she was in that a cookie couldn't help with. So Ruby started pulling out all the ingredients she needed, laying them all out on the kitchen counter as she washed her hands and got out the bowls and stirrers.
Her dad came home as she was just finishing the first batch.
"Do I smell cookies?" he poked his head into the kitchen, a smile on his face. Ruby scooped some cookie dough into her mouth before nodding. Tai walked over, swiping a finger through the bowl of cookie dough and popping it in his mouth. "Ah, delicious."
"Thanks, dad," Ruby tucked her hair behind her ear, a tight-lipped smile on her face as she averted her eyes. Tai paused, his gaze on his daughter. His young daughter, who was a million years older than she deserved to be. His baby daughter that had to grow up too quickly, that had to move too fast, faster than he did, faster than her mother did. She looked to the world like she was all put together, like she had it all figured out. She looked to him like she was lost, and she was wishing for something that couldn't happen anymore.
Tai put a hand on Ruby's shoulder, and steeled himself.
"You know, I wish I knew her recipe too," he said, and Ruby looked at him in surprise. Then her gaze softened, and her smile came out, small and quiet.
"Yeah, I still don't think I got the hang of it," she muttered, a light pink tinge on her cheeks. Tai laughed.
"You'll figure it out," he paused. "I miss her too."
"I know," Ruby said.
"But I think she would've liked this," he motioned towards her bowl. "I think she wouldn't have minded at all."
Ruby sighed, then leaned in to hug her dad.
"Love you," she mumbled into his chest. Tai squeezed her tight, wishing she was still that wide-eyed three year old with those cute buck teeth and infinite energy. He would settle for the strong, smart woman that she was.
"Love you too, kiddo," he planted a kiss on her head. His mind was a million miles away from her baking, then. "She really would've loved this."
So I severely underestimated the number of people in the world that have any fencing experience, y'all have been slam dunking on me about it and my pride is very, very wounded but let's just chalk all this up to suspension of disbelief, alright? Please, for my sake lmao. Love yall thanks for enjoying this fic.