Fever dreams upon fever dreams, nightmares of hunting and rain, memories of sin and pain. The girl with tainted blood awoke in a cold sweat, rays of sunlight beating her face and cooking her body under the sheets. A simple look at the mansion room brought her to a panic, the girl not used to waking up in places she had no memory of falling asleep in the first place. In a rush she threw off the soft quilts and jumped from the bed, finding herself dressed in a tattered nightgown and her feet wrapped in bandaging.
Gunning for the door, her anxiety only got worse when the door proved itself to be locked from the outside. Taking fearful steps backward, she spun around and searched the room, trying to find if there was some other way out besides the four panel window glass fixture in the wall. She checked under the bed, flipped the chairs, searched the bedside table drawers, but found nothing. Trapped and suddenly aware of her hunger, she submitted to the situation and sat upon the bed, her thoughts and memories in a stupor.
How did she get here? No, what about before that, what exactly was she doing out in the rain.
Why did she recall a piercing pain? There was a vivid memory of the taste of iron. Or was it meat?
There was terror, fur, a full moon. Was there a beast? Did she get attacked, was she saved?
As she put her hand to her heart in her dismay, an ache below her ribcage came to her attention. Her hand slid downwards to a prominent lump. She scrunched her face. Confusion. She looked down her gown. Stitches pulling the skin of a square hole together. Not only that, in her looking down she noticed scars along her collar bone reaching up and around her neck on the right. Then there was the bandaging wrapping her cheek and the bridge of her nose.
The door rattled as a key was worked into an old lock, the girl freezing in place on the bed. The brass handle shook and turned as the hinges creaked, the door opening at a brisk pace. Weiss stepped through the entryway, tray of food in hand, not noticing the girl's awakening until she was within arms reach.
The heiress was no longer in her hunting kit, instead donning brown pinstripe pants with tall brown boots, a casual, poofy armed button up white shirt, and an olive green vest set with gold filigree, her favorite style. As much as it clashed however, she kept her beaten white tricorn with the frizzled feathers on either side.
"Oh!" the white haired figure exclaimed, "you're awake."
"Where am I? Who are you?" the girl said in turn.
"Here," Weiss handed the tray of food to her prisoner, then swayed to face the rest of the room. "You don't like mornings? I can sympathize." The girl stared intently, patiently, breathlessly as Weiss slowly strolled her way to a flipped chair, kicked it upright with a semi impressive display of foot control, then kicked it closer to the bed. Strolling nonchalantly back over, Weiss plopped herself down into the chair. She scooted back just a little to get out of the overbearing rays of sun that was likely to burn her pale skin. "You are in Castle Vale, or the Schnee Mansion, whichever you prefer to call it. I am Weiss of House Schnee."
Without thinking, the girl mumbled, "Weiss Schnee, you're shorter than I would've thought…"
Closing her eyes, Weiss took a moment to chew her tongue, continuing, "The question is, who are you?"
The girl carefully watched Weiss's foot reach out and kick the door shut, and noticed in her peripheral how she simultaneously removed her feathered tricorn and laid it on her lap. The girl did not notice how Weiss had slipped her revolver from behind her waist and tucked it under her hat, the hammer drawn back and sights lined up on the girl's center mass.
"My name is Ruby." Her voice was a little higher than Weiss expected, teetering on crisp and scratchy at the same time.
"Ruby. Hmm." Weiss reached up with her non-gun hand and pulled left and right on her white shirt collar, craning her neck. She wasn't nervous but the room was a little stuffy. "Do you perchance have a house name?"
"Xiao Long." Ruby maintained a rigid stare on Weiss, a stare the princess returned with confidence.
"You're a 'Xiao Long'?" Weiss tilted her head.
"My mother was Celtic."
"And your father?"
"Wasn't."
Weiss smiled, then shook her head. She looked back to the girl.
"You are from the east then? I thought you looked a little off…" she explained casually, not reacting to a little twinge in Ruby's face. "No, you seem mostly western. Tell me, where exactly was your father from?"
"China."
"What was your mothers name?"
"Rose, and her mother was named Summer."
"Hmm. Well Ruby, daughter of Rose, how old are you?"
Ruby gripped the sheets by her side tightly, suddenly remembering she had no idea what she was doing there still. "Seventeen. Why am I here!?" her voice shook.
Leaning forward onto her knees, the princess squinted hard at the other. "What do you remember exactly?"
Ruby spilled her guts on her feverish snippets of recollections, saying how she remembered the feelings of many wildly different events, and sensations, but couldn't piece together or make sense of it all. She began rambling when Weiss held up a commanding finger denoting silence. Silence is what she got, Ruby lowering her head.
The princess leaned back. She weighed her options, considered the implications of Ruby's account, pondered the consequences of her ambitions and figured possible solutions to them should it come to that. She knew she needed to tread carefully, for if she played her cards wrong, this opportunity might just slip through her fingers.
"You were slashed by a werewolf, I believe the night before the full moon based on your reaction. The night of, you went out and hunted a farm hand, consumed their flesh—"
The brunette recoiled in horror, grey eyes dilating in an influx of emotions, mind unable to keep up.
"Yes," Weiss pointed at the girl, "you did that, and that's why I took the job to hunt you down. You followed the scent of carnage all the way to my incense where I defeated you."
"I couldn't have killed someone…" Ruby echoed.
"We still have the body if you wish to see, I am not lying to you."
"No, I don't… I don't think I could bear to see it…" Falling over, Ruby covered her eyes with her arm, feeling faint. Tears welled up in her eyes. "I'm going to burn in hell, I have
sinned." Tossing about, she took to her knees and started praying at the window, Weiss noticing a brief moment where Ruby reached for what must've been a cross at her neck only to realize nothing was there. Weiss smiled wide, then wiped the grin from her face, appearing somber.
"Here," she extracted a silver cross from under her shirt and unfastened it, dropping it link by link into Ruby's extended hand. "Keep it. Pray. Atone. But you can never take back what you did under the watch of God."
Ruby looked up to Weiss's sympathetic eyes. The tears that welled started streaming down, falling from her face and staining the bed. She clenched the cross so her knuckles went white, prayers distorted by the sobs she choked on. Weiss rolled her eyes.
"You're a true believer, you must really fear his wrath."
"I murdered an innocent!" Ruby screamed, shocking Weiss just a little. Her finger stroked the trigger under her hat.
"Well," the heiress rocked her head side to side, "a farmhand."
"What does a farmhand have to hide!? Just some person, I killed a person who no doubt lead a quiet life! They did their work, they kept out of trouble, and had no way of saving themselves… even worse, it could've been my sister…" She covered her upper face as though to hide her shame, to not see the world would mean the world couldn't see her. Through gritted teeth she kept sobbing.
Weiss felt a pang of guilt in her chest. She frowned. She needed to find something she could use as motivation to convince this stranger to fight monsters, to utilize her potential gifts, but the heiress had suspected that motivation would've been wealth. Instead she found that this stranger was pure of heart, felt for other people, had empathy, something she did her best to avoid normally. Nonetheless, she could use this.
For the better part of half an hour, Weiss formulated her offer while the other vented her guilt through tears. Finally she spoke and leaned back. "Why do you think you're here?"
Ruby sniffled. "What do you mean?"
A sigh. "What do you think I mean?" she urged, shaking her head in an ambiguous display of either annoyance or just mechanical motion.
"Well… I think you mean why am I here, as in, you're Weiss the Huntsmen, from what I understand… you should've already killed me…" Her stare fell to her hands, the notion of her own mortality just dawning on her.
Weiss took notice, however desired the opposite. "No, that was not what I meant." She crossed her legs. "Each of us are put on this earth to prove ourselves and do right before we pass on. Trials and tribulations are God's gifts that allow us to do our best by him. Look at me." The brunette's eyes leveled back on the noble. "Your taint is weak, a gift if you wil,l to do much more than had none of this happened."
"Taint? Weak?"
Uncrossing her legs, she leaned back forward and reached out, thin fingers grabbing the side of Ruby's face, cold fingers offering a sobering solace. "Help me daughter of Rose. I can help you control yourself during the full moons, and your wolfblood will prove invaluable in hunting the monsters that go bump in the night. We, together, can…" Weiss considered her words, "we can purify the world of some of its evils." She pulled back. "Or, if you wish, I can help you control your urges, and you can go back home, and live a quiet life, do good in the typical fashions, if you so choose."
Ruby hesitated. There was a disconnect in what Weiss was saying. A contradiction. Was this really a 'gift from God' as Weiss put it, and didn't he say earlier that she couldn't atone? How could the death of an innocent be intentional? Ruby never heard of other werewolves having a choice, was it right to hunt them? Didn't Weiss change his tune just a bit? Did he just change his mind? If so, why was she spared if he didn't plan this? Her mind raced with suspicions.
But she wasn't used to such thoughts. The thought of atonement, of doing good had taken root however, a beacon of light in the dark, and it flashed so brightly that before she knew it, she couldn't see anything except what she wanted to see. Her idealism took the helm.
"I'll do it!" she announced, mustering her strongest look to offer Weiss.
The heiress clapped her hands in sudden excitement. "Excellent!" She stood up, brushing her lap and fixing her pants as a disguise to holster her gun while she elaborated, "I'll set up the arrangements. You work on your farm, yes?" Ruby nodded. "I'll send a trustworthy laborer to take your place. You can eat your breakfast and then I'll have the tailor dress you, and my squire will show you around."
"Can I see my sister too? I want her to know I'm safe…"
"Of course!" Patting the girl on the shoulder, Weiss took to the door, ready to go. "Does your farm have a name?"
"Patch."
Weiss stopped in place, her face twisted with the simple question 'why'. "A farm named Patch. Hmm. I'll send someone right away."
Ruby perked up, calling out before Weiss opened the door. "Prince?"
Weiss chuckled quietly to herself. She turned to face Ruby once more. "Yes?"
"Thank you." Weiss could barely hear her, but the impact of the words, the look of the earnest girl's passion stricken face, the fire in her grey eyes, it all caused a flash of heat across her face. She suddenly felt the need to sweat.
"Of course."
She closed the door. The hallway was far cooler than the room, a fact Weiss could appreciate. Jaune was waiting on the other side of the door. Waiving a hand, she gestured for him to follow her as she started a fast stride. "She will be joining us it seems." He looked at her sincere smile for longer than he probably should have.
"Would you really let her go home if she refused?" Jaune had his own chuckle, the thought of his consistently mean liege growing a soft spot somehow amusing. Heir Weiss brought down to human by some farm girl.
Her smile maintained as she divulged cooly, "Of course. I would give her the carriage ride there, then in the night, I would return and slit her throat." It was then that Jaune experienced his own brand of terror.
-End Chapter 3-