Two figures walked down the narrow valley path, being careful to not slip into the gurgling rapids below their feet. A single false step would end either one of them, especially while the harsh winds were whipping past them through the ravine, tugging on their clothes and trying to knock them off-balance. The taller figure in front leisurely strolled ahead of the other, not waiting for his limping companion to catch up. He cleared the path of debris while his partner lagged behind, and playfully kicked the corpse of a Doberman into the hissing waters below.

A pair of grey eyes followed the hound's corpse as it sailed through the air and landed with a splash in the black waters below. "So Weiss at least fought back... she can't have just died here..."

A snort came from the hooded figure in front of her, who looked back at Ruby over the scarf wrapped around his face. Only his coal black eyes were visible as he glared back at Ruby, snapping at her angrily. "You're reaching Red. I've told you over and over she's dead. I came looking myself after I found you; thought I'd get the gang back together. Nothin when I looked then, and nothin while we're looking now. Your little girlfriend probably just dragged the other two mutts in with her when she fell into the river."

Ruby wasn't convinced though. Weiss had to be alive; it didn't make any sense for the blonde to die. At least not yet, not while Ruby still felt a sense of purpose. 'No... Weiss is alive, somewhere. She just has to be.'

Behind her Ruby heard her savior, who was still being a real jackass, joking to himself at Weiss's unknown fate. "Dumbest blonde I ever met, she even takes the cake from your dumb bimbo of a sister... literally, she could have taken any other path, and would have been perfectly fine. Takes a real moron to find the only dead end in the entire mountain range. Instead sh-!"

He would have kept on going, but at that point Ruby swirled around, ignoring the flair of pain in her knee, and brought her steel toed boot up right in between his legs.

His eyes almost bulging out of their sockets, he fell to the ground, safe from the path's edge. And as he fell to the ground Ruby stumbled too, landing on her hands and knees. In the quick motion, Ruby had felt something tear inside her, deep in her chest. Ruby coughed into her palm, ignoring the groans coming from the figure in the fetal position in front of her.

After the few second long hacking fit, Ruby pulled her hand away to see it covered in crimson speckles. Glaring at the figure lying on his side, the redhead wiped some of the excess blood on her lips off with her sleeve and growled: "First off, you say anything like that about Weiss or Yang again, and your ass is going in this river." Straightening to her full height, she looked down at the crouched over finger and held her palm out towards him. "And second, you did a really shitty patch job."

Now rolling on his back, still cradling his injured pride, he glared daggers at the redhead through teary eyes and wheezed a simple "fuck you." At the end, as though it was a separate thought, he added through gritted teeth "... bitch!"

Ruby sighed, taking in the scene before her again. How could she have traded Weiss for this dumbass. In the few short hours she had been walking with the living again, how could everything have fallen apart this badly? Thinking back on everyone she had known, Ruby actually wondered if there was anyone on the planet she would have wanted to have been saved by less.

Anyone at all...

"Finally you're awake… you've been pissing me off how much you sleep. Come on, get up."

As Ruby opened her eyes and stared up at flickering shadows across a dusty ceiling, she didn't wonder why she was on a cold, stony floor. She didn't question why out of the corner of her eye she could see a rosy fire crackling away merrily. Instead she was wondering how she could be seeing anything. Hadn't she died?

"Come on bitch! I heard you shift; I know you're kickin' it again." Ruby felt a slight nudge on the side of her head as something hard and cold taped against her temple. "You can actually be useful and help me redo your dressings. It's a pain in the ass to do them while you're lying on the ground and I'm forced to work underneath you."

Shifting her neck slightly Ruby looked over in the direction of the voice, which was distinctly male… and somehow vaguely familiar. Originally just out of her line of sight, now hovering over her, a familiar face peered down from a rock ledge above her. One that mixed a playful grin and an angry scowl quite well. After a few seconds, where the pale face smiled at Ruby crookedly while she stared back dully, the old memories suddenly clicked.

When Ruby finally placed the face, instead of smiling back she involuntarily scrambled away and tried to reach into her back pocket where she usually kept her spare knife.

As she moved, she saw the perched figure above her leap down at her, a heavy winter coat fluttering in the air as he shot through the space separating the two. Just as her hand slid off her chest and to her side Ruby felt half of her fingers get pinned under a boot, and looked up to see a gun barrel being pointed down at her face.

"I didn't waste all that time and energy I spent healing you to have you go ripping open all of your wounds. If you did something like that… well, I wouldn't heal you again."

"Long time no see, Mercury," Ruby spat up at the figure leering over her, who had aimed the bottom of his boot at her face.

"Good to see you to Red." After a second where the two starred each other down, creating a tension so thick it was almost palpable, Mercury made the decision to step off Ruby's hand. Slowly walking backwards away from Ruby, being careful to not take his eyes off of her for a second, he sat down close to her level on an overturned log by the crackling fireplace. As he walked, his shoes made an audible shnick-shnick sound as the gun barrels on each of his shoes clicked against the hard shale floor. Sitting back down on top of his wooden throne, Mercury put his hands behind his head and leered down at the redhead, sneering: "I'd like a thank you when you find your manners... bitch."

Sitting up slowly, feeling a slight throbbing coming from her chest, leg and shoulder, Ruby looked around the area that she had woke up in. Ruby could tell that she was in some kind of cave, and looking out to her right Ruby could still see snow clinging to the ground a dozen or so feet out at the mouth of the tunnel. The sky was a deep purple, and she could see the light given off by the moon lighting up the clouds in the sky, even if the brunette couldn't see the moon itself. Off a bit to her right, Ruby saw all of her possessions, minus the rifle, piled up against the cave's wall.

Watching Mercury out of the side of her eye while she sat up, Ruby got the strongest feeling of déjà vu. It felt like a blast out of the past for her. Sure Mercury was older, probably in his early thirties now, but he really looked the same as when she had last seen him almost eight or so years ago. Dressed in all black, except for a pair of silver gloves and old grey boots, Mercury looked fit and lean in his winter gear. And he was strangely clean-shaven, without even five o'clock shadow on his face.

Looking down at herself, Ruby saw that under the thin fleece blanket she had been resting under, Ruby's entire torso had been covered in white gauze. And from the itching Ruby felt around her knee, Ruby could guess that her leg was wrapped just as thoroughly. "How am I fine?"

"You're not," Mercury snapped back. Bringing his ankle onto his knee and resting his chin on his palm, he stared Ruby down as though she was a difficult math problem. "I'm out of practice, and while I covered up your wounds and reworked most of your arteries so that your leg wouldn't shrivel, I didn't do much else. You stretch too much, or at all really, and you're going to rip all my hard work to shreds."

While anyone else would have been intimidated by Mercury's presence, Ruby saw through his thin attempt at bravado almost instantly. He was overdoing the macho act, and it was easy to see how twitchy Mercury was. Although there really wasn't much reason to be worried; Ruby still felt like death. If Mercury wanted her dead, he wouldn't have much of a fight on his hands.

Still, Ruby was a little stunned, how he made it sound as though pulling someone back from the brink of death was something that should have been done more efficiently. "Wait... how did you even-"

Cut off by an impatient gesture from Mercury, Ruby received back a growling answer in the form of a question. "You do remember why Cinder kept me around for as long as she did, don't you?"

"Uh... you had a healing semblance, didn't you?"

After a short snort, Mercury sneered: "a healing semblance?! Red, I'm insulted that you would knock me down that low". Rolling his shoulders as though he was prepping to give some grand speech, Mercury looked down his nose at her with a twisted smile. "I was, and still am, the world's best field medic. Ever." Mercury paused for a second, before adding a bitter side note. "At least... at least before everything went to shit. I healed the entire white fang army, over a hundred, single-handedly during that last skirmish we fought in before the world fell apart."

Groaning at the memory, Ruby sighed "uh… I remember that day. I thought we were done, when you suddenly roll up with Neo and pick everyone up off the floor".

"It was harder than I made it look, I passed out after that," Mercury commented with a small smile, as though reliving the old war stories warmed his heart.

"Who fucking cares if you passed out? We had you!" Ruby covered her face with her hands and groaned again, even louder than before. "It was twenty verses two hundred, and we-"

"One hundred and eighty six" Mercury cut in, although Ruby continued on as though she didn't hear him.

"And we won! We only had one casualty… and bless his soul," Ruby added sarcastically, "but nobody cared about Dove! Even Cardin wasn't fazed by it! We had you guys!" Throwing her hands up in the air in frustration, Ruby glared at Mercury and growled: "then you show up, switch sides on us, and forced us to retreat! God damn it Mercury! You ruined everything!"

"Yeah, like you weren't a constant thorn in my side either. You gave me so many headaches back when we were still going strong, you and your team's shock tactics on our bases were a pain in the ass to deal with."

Now it was Ruby's turn to stare down Mercury. "If I was such a pain, why did you even bother saving me then? I was dead, and so was..." Suddenly Ruby's mind froze in its tracks. Holy shit, how could I forget about Weiss! Without even finishing her sentence, Ruby began whipping her head around, looking for Weiss behind some rock ledge or tree stump. Her stiff neck creaked loudly at the sudden movement as she whipped her head around, looking for some sign of her partner.

With a raised eyebrow Mercury asked "looking for the girlfriend?"

"Where is she?" While Ruby's voice sounded no more animated than when she had complained about the lost battle only moments before, in truth she was reeling internally. She had to be here. She had to be okay. The brunette couldn't comprehend the idea of Weiss not being so. "Where is Weiss?"

Mercury twisted his neck, and after a dull popping noise he answered her absentmindedly.

"...Dead."

Ruby felt as though she had been electrocuted. After a half second, where she stared dumbly at Mercury, the brunette flared back to life, raising her voice to the point where it broke. "Weiss is not dead!"

"Well Red, she ain't walking among the living anymore!" Mercury sighed dully as he continued on, saying: "She's finished, gone, finito! She played her last song, bit the bullet, took a plane to Vegas, yada yada... you get my point."

Pushing herself off the hard shale floor to her feet, Ruby stumbled for a few seconds as the blood rushed out of her head and left her feeling light-headed and dizzy. Ruby couldn't remember feeling this stiff in a long time. Interrupting Mercury's tirade of analogies, the brunette asked: "How long was I out for?"

"Well, by the angles and trajectories of the sun, stars and the moon…" Mercury began joking, although he trailed off when he caught the murderous look on Ruby's face. Swallowing loudly, Mercury answered in a more level voice: "Three days, give or take a few hours."

Ruby nodded absentmindedly, cursing her bad luck. 'Sure I should be thankful to be alive… but damn, three days gives Weiss a big lead on me'. Walking over to where she saw part of her possessions piled high against the wall, Ruby leaned down and grabbed her heavy black winter coat. Pulling her bad arm through the sleeve, the brunette stopped for a second as she felt her thumb get caught in a hole over the right sleeve.

Just as she got her hand all the way through the jacket's arm, a train of thought just crossed Ruby's mind. A sleazy thought, somewhat obscene and mildly disturbing. Looking down at herself, and at the bandaging around her midsection, Ruby realized that her clothes hadn't disappeared on their own. And while anything that she would have wanted to keep covered was either covered by the gauze or her underwear, she wasn't wearing anything else.

Wheeling around with fire in her eyes, intent on laying waste to Mercury, she shrieked at him in rage. "You fucking pervert!"

Started to the point of jumping a full foot off of his stump and landing on the cave floor, Mercury reacted badly and gave her a shaky smile in response to the brunette's shriek. With eyes so wide they looked as though they would fall out of his head he asked in a shaky, joking voice "excusez-moi?"

"I should kill you right now for even touching me!"

The only emotion on Mercury's face was confusion, and as he looked up at the stormy gray eyes contemplating murder, he slowly repeated "touching…?" A quarter of a second later though, his eyes narrowed to slits as he finally caught on to her meaning. "Are you seriously that vain?"

His only response was simple, venomous. "I'll fucking kill you!"

Angrily, both surprised and insulted, Mercury spat back at Ruby "You seriously think I'd even want to … Well, sorry to disappoint you Red, but the idea of raping a malnourished, unconscious patient is a serious turnoff for me. Maybe try again later, and I might be interested."

"I'll fucking-!"

"Ruby!" Mercury yelled, forcing the brunette to pause for a moment. With a cold stare, Mercury added sharply: "I'm not interested."

Ruby gave a snort, still contemplating murder. But something about how obviously offended, and brutally honest, Mercury was made Ruby believe he was being straight with her. So she angrily shoved her arms through her jacket sleeves, and hurried to finish dressing.

Once she was fully clothed, she turned and walked out of the cave, not taking a second to look back. She only gave a tiny sigh when she heard metal clicking off of the stone floor as her ward followed her out into the night.

"Alright Red, so what are you gonna do now?"

Ruby didn't like walking next to Mercury on the side of the gorge, where he could shove her in the frigid waters bellow at a single moment's notice. Taking a few quick steps, ignoring the flare of pain from her leg, Ruby cut in front of her annoying shadow so that she was now in front of Mercury and walk with her arm sliding across the cavern wall. Raising a hand over her shoulder as though to wave him off, Ruby replied back sarcastically: "which is it Mercury? Am I going to be the Bitch, Ruby, or Red? I'm getting whiplash with all the different names you're throwing at me."

Playfully running a hand through his hair, pulling up next to Ruby, he answered: "I think I'll be flipping back and forth between the set; keep you on your toes… anyway, that's not an answer. What next?"

Ruby didn't hear his question though; she was too lost in thought. 'He's walking right next to me. I should push him in, before he realizes I could kill him right now. If I kicked him, he wouldn't be able to grab me before I was out of his reach. I need to get rid of him before-'

"Starship Red: do you copy! Hellooooooooooooo! The hell is up with you?!"

Ruby grimaced, realizing that as they stepped out of the chasm, she missed her chance. 'I'll get more. I need to get rid of him sooner or later. If I can lose him, great. But now, while I can't outrun him, killing him is probably my only option'.

Mercury snapped his fingers in front of the brunette's face, angrily asking: "You bit? You're walking around half-dazed like a clicker. I'm starting to worry you'll turn and jump on me any second!"

Not telling Mercury how close he was to guessing Ruby's thoughts, she snapped back "what?!"

"What are you doing now? Your little friend is dead; I'm curious what the next move for the great 'Ruby Rose' is going to be." Mercury began biting his nails while looking up at the night sky, and over his left thumb he mumbled: "I'm guessing you were heading to Beacon from here… that or the coastline, maybe?"

Ignoring his guesses, Ruby replied back flatly. "Weiss isn't dead."

Mercury froze mid step, and Ruby continued walking forward for another few seconds before she notice his stopping. Turning back to look at him, Ruby saw Mercury's face plastered with a look lost somewhere between infuriated and flabbergasted. Stuttering angrily, Mercury stumbled over his jumbled words angrily as he spoke. "W-w-we came all the way HERE, in the middle of the freaking night! Just so you could double-check me and look for yourself! Even after I told you everything already back in the cave! We didn't see a single trace of her!"

Whirling away from Mercury, Ruby's eyes squinted as the moon suddenly moved out from behind a cloud and shone brightly down on her. Momentarily blinded by the sudden light, she angrily stared up at the sky while hissing: "so I'll just keep looking then!"

Ruby heard a sound of contempt behind her, although she didn't turn back to see whatever judgmental look Mercury was wearing now. Trudging off angrily, the brunette weaved through the tree's following her earlier tracks through the snow as she worked her way back to the cave.

Finishing the nails on his left hand, and transitioning over to his right, Mercury simply scoffed lightly at the limping figure ahead of him, adding under his breath as Ruby walked away: "how did you make it this long if you're that hopeful?"

Walking back into the cave, whose fire was still going strong, Ruby quickly grabbed her pack off of the ground and threw it over her good shoulder. Bouncing it off her back, Ruby noticed that the bag didn't feel any lighter than usual. Ether that, or the brunette was much weaker than she had been before she had gotten hurt. A quarter of a second later, she heard the sound of Mercury entering the cave behind her as the clicking that usually followed him resonated off the walls.

"How does all that clacking not give you a headache?" Ruby asked the question sourly, her already foul mood even more damped by her bleak prospects at finding her partner.

"What, this?" As Mercury asked, he tapped his heel against the floor, smiling lightly as he did so. "I think of it more as a built-in metronome. Closest thing to an iPod any of us are going to find around here."

"Hmph" Ruby scoffed, finding no amusement in his answer.

Rolling his eyes, Mercury quipped lightly: "are those the only sounds you can make! Groans and grunts! Sheesh, lighten up!" Doing a quick dance, Mercury then joked "I can do a wicked tap-dance in these baby's… if you're at all interested?"

Turning on her heel, squaring up to the smiling Mercury as best she could, Ruby put on her most menacing expression. Holding out her palm face up, the brunette simply growled: "Rifle."

That wiped the smile from Mercury's face instantly, and he stopped for a moment while gauging the face of the brunette in front of her. Ruby thought that she was going to have to fight him for it, and was getting ready to argue with him when he said "behind that ledge over there." He then nodded over to the back corner of the cave, just at the fringe of the lights reach.

Ruby watched him wearily as she strode past her old silver-haired enemy, and just as she exited the light from the fire, the brunette felt her foot connect with something dense and wooden. After a few seconds of scrounging around on the ground, Ruby felt her fingers curl around the worn leather strap of her trusty rifle. And while she always made fun of herself for it, the brunette would be lying if she said the world didn't feel any more bleak when she didn't have her weapon at her side. It had been the same with Crescent Rose, and after all these years, Ruby couldn't say that her unnamed rifle was any less special to her.

Ruby didn't turn around while she picked up her rifle, feeling it hang on its shoulder strap as she straightened up. Because as she began to straighten out, Ruby realized that Mercury had sent her back against a wall, in a corner with nothing to hide behind and nothing to take cover with. She might as well have placed herself in front of the business end of a firing squad. Her mind racing while she stood at the edge of the light, Ruby started freaking out over her situation.

'I'm a fool for asking for this now! Mercury isn't an idiot; he set this up, and he's been waiting to see if I turn on him the second I get my hands on a weapon. My rifle probably isn't even loaded; he wouldn't be stupid enough to give me a loaded rifle. He just wants to see what I'll do with a weapon. I should just turn around slowly, holding it by the strap, and thank him. I'll get a thousand chances later. Or… maybe I should take the chance? He might have waited for me to be armed before taking me out. He strikes me as the honorable type, although they usually don't make it this long. I should kill him now! But what if I'm wrong and this isn't loaded! Then I'll just be a sitting duck with nothing better than a club to take him on with. But if he is going to… ARGH! There's no way out of this!'

Turning around slowly while her mind was still reeling, deciding to hold the strap of her rifle away from her body, Ruby turned back to try to thank Mercury. And when Ruby turned to face Mercury, she saw him sitting cross-legged by the fire with his back towards her. He threw another log into the dying blaze while calling back "I'll take first watch!"

Staring at the figure hovering over the fire dumbfounded, Ruby said to herself "he is an idiot…"

As quietly as she could manage sneaking out with a limp, Ruby shuffled out into the early morning sunlight and away from the cave's mouth. She felt as though she had repaid every one of her debts to Mercury by standing watch over him throughout the night after his shift had ended. She had waited the few hours leading up to dawn, mulling over her choices. As soon as Mercury had fallen asleep the night before, disappearing behind a crevice in the cave that wasn't easy to see, Ruby had checked her rifle. Fully loaded, even with a bullet in the chamber. It was only because of that simply fact, that utterly stupid sign of trust, that the brunette had decided to sneak out at the break of dawn instead of ending his life while he was sleeping.

Ruby quietly began walking towards the tree line, and as she limped away, she couldn't help but feel bad about how she had treated Mercury last night. He had shown no sign of wanting to hurt Ruby, but had instead wasted precious resources trying to save her. And all she had done was plan out killing him all night long, over and over, until she could just run for the hills without him.

Just as she turned around a corner and past the first tree on the fringe of the forest, Ruby had a mini heart attack as a sly voice from her right quipped "hey Red."

"Gah!" As Ruby leapt away from the sound, her pack went flying off of her back and landed in the shallow snow.

"Sheeeeesh, aren't you jumpy" Mercury quipped lightly, half hidden by shadows while leaning against the very same tree that Ruby had walked by while entering the forest!"

"Wha… where… how…" Ruby asked, unable to form a full thought.

"I take walks in the mornings; helps to stay fresh" Mercury lied smoothly, guessing what Ruby was trying to ask. Leaning down and picking up a light grey pack that was sitting in the snow next to his feet, Mercury slung the bag over his shoulder while asking nonchalantly "so, where are we heading?"

"We?! What makes you think I'd want you around?"

Raising an eyebrow, Mercury responded back "my rugged good looks, obviously."

Growling angrily, Ruby stalked off past him, not taking the time to look behind her. Ruby knew without any confirmation that he would follow. "You better not be hoping for some grand adventure, we're going wherever I say, and I don't care what you think!"

Mercury just chuckled lightly as he followed behind her, laughing to himself while saying "I've got nowhere better to be."

And now things start to take off again! I hope you liked the chapter, and the new characters it brings! So leave a comment reviewing the chapter if you have the time, critiques are always appreciated and what not.

Anyhow, thanks for reading!