Lost in the night's darkness, barely any moonlight spilling in through the open third story window behind them, Ruby had to pull away just to get the chance at a breath. Her eyes, usually able to see more than enough in the dark, now struggled to find anything in the washed out gloom surrounding her. The shadows that clung to every form and figure, hiding from her an old home.
"Aren't..." Ruby started to ask, the sound of her voice wavering with its breathlessness. "Aren't we going a bit fast?"
Underneath her, Weiss just stared up at Ruby, the only emotion on her perfect face annoyance at the sudden stop. "Well, if anything, I'd say we've been going unbearably slow." Cupping a hand behind Ruby's neck, the blonde pulled the girl above her close and whispered: "...a ten year engagement would usually mean the proposer's getting cold feet, wouldn't it? ...No reason to hold back, and I'd hate for you to think I'm getting flighty after all this time..."
Before Ruby could respond, Weiss caught her lips again, and held her there silently. Leaving her unable to speak, and barely able to think, as they continued on into their night.
Lying there on her old bed, with Weiss cradling her head in her lap, Ruby couldn't help but feel somewhat out of place. All this... it didn't feel quite right. If Ruby had been told to put this feeling, this rolling ache in her chest, into words... it would have been a struggle. If you'd given her enough time to mull over her thoughts, Ruby would probably have said it felt like she'd gotten herself lost in another person's story. The sharp contrast between the past few years and the last few days left her unsure that she hadn't slipped out of her own biography and into someone else's brighter pages.
'Why do I get to come back from that?' Ruby gave a small shudder, the cold wind blowing in from the open window, breaking her train of thought. 'How does my life get to be like this, from so bitter to this sweet?'
Goosebumps stood up all across her arms, as she felt Weiss's nimble fingers play with the locks of hair above her temples. The blonde would catch a strand at the base, between a thumb and forefinger, and softly pull upwards until the hair slipped from her fingers. Then... she'd repeat. To Ruby, the motion seemed a bit like whenever Weiss would scratch at her scar, whenever she wasn't really there and more than anything just lost in thought.
"You know," Weiss sighed, a smile in her voice, "your hair is probably longer than mine right now..."
"Hmph... jealous?" Shifting her head and gazing up, Ruby looked at the bare torso of Weiss, arching above her and occupying everything she could see. It'd been a long time since she'd seen this much bare skin from Weiss, and a part of Ruby was shocked by how perfect it still was. Smooth and creamy, Weiss's skin somehow appeared simultaneously delicate and strong. Like perfect porcelain, or polished marble.
Of course, how perfect Weiss seemed just made Ruby feel even more out of place. Somewhat self-conscious, the redhead absentmindedly wondered how her skin compared. 'Well, it's definitely not smooth', Ruby grumbled internally, shifting as Weiss's calves became uncomfortable under her neck.
'Not smooth... not by a long shot...'
Ruby knew she was covered in nicks and scars, over marked from the years of constantly being sliced up, restitched, and repeating the process all over again. In her mind's eye, Ruby saw herself damaged, pockmarked with bullet holes and the echoing crescent shaped smiles from stab wounds. She was Like an old, rusted, scuffed up klunker, somehow parked next to a fresh off the lot Corvette. Lying out in front of Weiss, the back of Ruby's mind couldn't help but worry how the blonde was judging her now.
"No... No, I'm not particularly envious..." Weiss murmured, breaking Ruby's train of thought, pulling the redhead back to the simpler conversation. "After all... you've got so many split ends, my hair's still a thousand times better," Weiss laughed, smiling at the mock insult hanging across Ruby's face. Leaning down, Weiss planted a slow kiss on the dip in Ruby's brow. As the blonde's locks fell over Ruby's face, she had to fight off a sneeze as the white strands just barely tickled her nose.
Reaching up, her right arm leaving the bed, Ruby lightly flicked Weiss on the forehead. Really, the tip of her finger barely brushed against the blonde, Ruby smiling as she watched Weiss's eyes open. Without breaking contact, Weiss let her icy eyes do all the necessary talking for her.
"Hey now, cut that out..." Ruby complained. "We aren't gonna get that lovey-dovey. Unless things have really changed, I distinctly remember neither of us being able to stand those types of couples without wanting to hurl..."
After a few seconds, just long enough for Ruby to wonder if she was even listening, Weiss's lips made a soft plinksound as they left the redhead's forehead. And Weiss just hung there above Ruby, with her lips just slightly parted, her eyes lidded heavily as though they were about to flutter shut any second.
Taking just long enough to make the moment intimate, Weiss slowly backed up, arching her back until she was straight up over Ruby again. Looking down on the redhead in her lap, her icy eyes were hard to decipher. Weiss looked up and down Ruby, and slowly, barely brushing over Ruby as she did so, her hands trailed down the redhead's sides. It was maddening, the sensation almost giving Ruby full power tremors as Weiss's cool fingertips slowly brushed along her skin.
When her fingers stopped bouncing over the ridges of Ruby's thin chest, both of the blonde's hands turned and followed the curve of Ruby's rib cage up towards her sternum. They trailed over the redhead's center, until her pail fingers landed on the redhead's most obvious scar. A bullet wound, with a shallow dip in the center barely the size of Weiss's thumb, surrounded by tendrils of red that streaked out from the midpoint. Against her tan skin, it almost looked like Ruby's chest had been branded with a sun, directly opposite her heart. Weiss's fingers stopped there, slowly swirling and tickling the new skin, admiring what had probably been frantic work on Mercury's part.
"...So," Weiss started to ask, not paying too much attention to Ruby as the redhead shifted and squirmed underneath her hands, "what kind of couple will we be then?"
Ruby paused for a second, honestly considering the question. What kind of couple were they? Reaching up, holding her palm against Weiss's cheek and feeling for the blonde's warmth, she repeated: "What kind of couple do we want to be?"
Her question didn't wrestle an answer out of the blonde. Leaving the sun, Weiss's two hands broke apart and separated. They both went off to different spots, skimming over to another two scars. One landed on Ruby's upper arm, brushing along the edges of another bullet wound, this one only a few weeks older than the sun. The other hooked under the tip Ruby's chin, feeling the split in her skin that the redhead had only received a month or so ago.
"I don't have enough," Weiss commented absentmindedly, either sidestepping or ignoring Ruby's new question to her previous one. While she talked, she twisted the arm that had been playing with the girl below her's chin, watching the soft moonlight play off the smooth skin of her bare arm. "Scars, I mean... we don't really balance out, us being on the road together so long..."
"Nope." Ruby started pressing her hand into Weiss's cheek more, firmly holding her palm against the blonde's face until Weiss had to respond and lean back against Ruby. "You don't need scars. Nobody does."
Weiss ignored Ruby, her eyes trailing from one mark to another, finding no lack of subjects to inspect. "They're proof you lived..."
"They're proof of pain," Ruby responded, trying to catch Weiss's eye. With the world flipped, it was hard to capture the blonde's gaze. "They are proof of missteps and mistakes. That's it, and nothing more. You don't need scars to prove you lived. And besides," Ruby smirked, trying to lighten the mood, "you're still so pail, you could probably be covered head to toe in scar tissue and we'd never know."
"Hmmm, you have a point... Well, I don't want us to be the couple we were back when we were kids," Weiss sighed, finally answering Ruby's… her question. "And we were such kids back then. Stupid, foolish kids..."
"I guess...," Ruby muttered, thinking back on who she had been nearly a decade ago. For the past few years, Ruby had felt unbridled and unrestrained hatred for her old self, towards her long lost happy go lucky ways. Now... the redhead was starting to really miss those simple, kind, easy emotions. How easy it used to come to her, to just think nice things, without even trying.
"Ruby... I want to say something." Weiss's eyes were clear, the laugh in them entirely gone.
"And you need to announce it?" Sitting up and scooting across the soft sheets so she was now leaning up against Weiss, Ruby felt a bit of nervousness creep into her limbs. 'Oh god, that look in her eyes is never a good sign... What if Weiss says this was it, that all this was a mistake? Or that she just wanted this last time...'
"Shoot Weiss," Ruby answered, catching and grinding those fears to dust. They were out of place, useless to her now. Irrelevant echoes of a question that had already been answered. Ruby knew Weiss wanted her, wanted them to be them again, for us to actually mean 'us'.
"That... That girl..." Weiss started, for some reason having trouble with the words. Ruby couldn't help but note how cute the way Weiss's eyebrows dipped together while she thought was. The face looked just like when Weiss got pissed, except for the lack of venom in her eyes. Ruby could remember seeing that look, which had spent most of its time angled directly at her, almost once a week back in her teens.
Weiss finally got whatever she'd been trying to put together in order, because the blonde suddenly deadpan dropped:
"That girl, the one who made me laugh and, and want to sing, forget about all my worries for as long as I wanted... The wonderful girl, who gave me the closest thing I had to any real relationship, and so much more than that too, way back when we were kids..." Weiss hesitated for a second leaned in a bit closer, turning towards Ruby so she was looking the redhead straight in the eyes.
"I just don't love her anymore."
Ruby stiffened, leaning back. "Weiss, what do you-?"
"And," Weiss cut her off, raising her voice, "you don't love that old prissy girl from our school days. The one who'd constantly tell you off and give you a hard time, push you to do better even when you were already the best there could be. Even at her greatest moments, when she wasn't driving you insane with all her insecurity and indecisiveness... you still don't love that girl anymore."
"Wait Weiss, that isn't tru-" Ruby started, before she was cut off again, this time by Weiss darting forward and capturing her lips. The blonde's arms, thin yet strong, hooked around Ruby's neck and pulled her down. Weiss fell back on the bed, and made Ruby lay down on top of her, still holding onto the kiss.
This one lasted for a while, and it wasn't until they were both nearly out of breath that they broke apart. And this one was followed by a second, third, and fourth kiss, before they actually took a break. When they did, Ruby just stayed there on top of Weiss, staring down into her clear azure eyes, her breathing hard. Weiss was the same, and her gaze was just as solid as she stared up into Ruby's silver pools.
"You're giving me mixed signals here Weiss," Ruby muttered, a nervous chuckle on her voice as she finally broke the brittle silence between them.
Weiss smiled and placed a hand on the back of Ruby's neck, pulling the girl above her down. Her head past Weiss's, Ruby shivered again as she felt her partner's cool breath whisper against her ear. Speaking through the curtain of ruddy auburn strands, the blonde hummed:
"I just don't love her anymore. Because I love you now."
"...That's it? Isn't that the same thing?" Ruby started laughing lightly, no more than a small chuckle.
"Nope." After a few more kisses on her jawline, more just pecks at her cheek than anything else, Weiss lightly trailed her hand along Ruby's side, signaling for the redhead to roll off. Once Ruby was at her side, her head propped up in a hand, Weiss went on.
"I don't love her anymore, because I love this you now... This me, after all these years and all the things we've gone through, couldn't love that wonderfully silly girl anymore." Weiss shifted so she was on her side, and Ruby mirrored the motion. The way Ruby was lying down though, she still had one of Weiss's arms pinned under her head. "She's just not what I would want anymore... I think you don't love that old Weiss, and I hope you'll love this new me now."
"I think I love you both...," Ruby sighed, trying to take the middle ground, smiling at the wistful look on Weiss's face. Before she could say anything else though, Weiss had placed a single, delicate finger on her lips, shushing the redhead.
"Let me finish all my thoughts... This life we've lived, all the time we've shared... it's changed us. This story, which could have gone a thousand different ways, towards a thousand different lows and highs... is our own. And I wouldn't love any one of those Ruby's, even if only a single thing was just barely off. And you wouldn't be able to stand any one of those Weiss's. Because this story, our story, is unique. I think it made us for each other..."
Weiss had started to tear up, the drips from her scarred eye curving over the bridge of her nose before joining the other trail of tears and falling off her cheek. "Now, just because I sound all sappy doesn't mean you're just off the hook for the past few years, you hear... I'll still be keeping track, make you start making things up to me..."
"I already was going to..." Ruby whispered, lifting up the sheet in between them and dabbing at Weiss's face.
"But... I'm not going to hold you responsible for that either... because there are parts of those stains on you that are my fault too..."
"...No." Ruby shook her head, the hair around her splaying out across the bed around her.
"It's gonna, g-gonna take a few years..." Weiss mumbled, her voice quivering somewhere between laughter and sobs.
"Years..." Ruby sighed, a smile on her lips at the thought. "I like the sound of a few years..."
"I just don't want us to try and be that old couple we were... both of us more obsessed with making the other think we love them than actually loving them. Because that isn't either of us anymore."
Ruby nodded, her ear rubbing up against the crook of Weiss's elbow. "Okay..."
"So if I want to call you the worst, most gooey, cringe worthy names I can think of, I will... If I feel like showering you with kisses, even if every one of the rest are around, I will. Because," Weiss sighed, her voice getting thick, "I want a break from all that formality. I-I think it can be-"
"Shhhh," Ruby cooed, hushing Weiss. "Alright, I understand... If you want that, then I'll do my best to make this be that..." After Weiss nodded, Ruby added: "...and you know what you said is right. About me loving this you now."
Weiss nodded again, her head rustling against the bed's pillow. Ruby's was just as comfortable, propped up on Weiss's outstretched arm, resting in the crook of the blonde's elbow. "I'm tired Ruby... it's been a good day..."
"Yes, it has," Ruby agreed.
"So... just go to sleep Ruby..." Weiss mumbled, happily sighing and leaning in one last time, her lips barely brushing against the redhead's cheek. "We'll talk in the morning..."
As much as she tried to fight it, Ruby couldn't help but feel her eyelids start to droop, betraying her drowsiness as she mirrored Weiss's own exhaustion. "We aren't done with this conversation, you know..."
Instead of responding, Weiss simply started humming, her notes slow and drawn out. Singing Ruby's old lullaby. Forcing Ruby into dreams before the redhead could do anything to resist. Weiss barely got out the tune, before she herself drifted off to sleep herself.
Waking up slowly, feeling more alive than she had in years, Ruby's eyes opened up and saw the mid-morning sun above her. Lying flat on her back, the redhead laid there and watched the dust motes swirl in the rays of sunlight above her for a few minutes. Ruby started to sit up to get out of the bed, until she felt something stiffen across her waist.
'Ah hell...,' Ruby grumbled happily, as she saw Weiss's arm wrapped around her chest. 'Now how the hell am I gonna get out of here?'
The blonde, with her hair splayed out behind her, was lying on her side curled up against Ruby. Her arms were both wrapped around the redhead. At some point through the night, Ruby guessed Weiss had shifted and sidled up to her. Somehow turned the taller girl into the little spoon.
'At least she her hands haven't found each other yet... if they had, there'd be no way to not wake her up...'
The redhead, being ever so careful, slowly lifted the arm across her torso up and slipped out from under the thin covers over them. It wasn't until she was out from the blankets and standing next to the bed that she actually let go of Weiss's wrist, slowly placing the blonde's arm back down on the mattress top. Watching Weiss, Ruby stayed frozen next to the bed for a few seconds, waiting to see if Weiss would wake up.
She shifted, and for a second Ruby thought she'd been caught. But in the end Weiss just grabbed up more of the blanket, which had covered where the redhead had been lying, and slowly sighed contently.
'So... she's still a blanket hog...,' Ruby remarked with a smirk, noticing how Weiss already had three quarters of the quilt they'd been under yanked behind her.
Standing there, looking down at Weiss's face, half hidden under a blanket that came up to her nose, Ruby couldn't help but feel... warm. Not just from the heat of the sun on her back, blistering her skin with pleasant rays of sunlight. But with happiness. This felt... normal. It felt good, to be sneaking off, trying not to wake the girl she'd spent the night with.
'Now... where did my...' Ruby started wondering, looking around the room for her own clothes. She wanted to go stretch for a minute, walk around the top floor once or twice before Weiss woke up.
Ruby knew at her core that she wasn't bailing as she searched for clothes. The redhead had every intention of being back long before she could be missed.
Her clothes nowhere to be found, although the errant memory of a red shirt getting flung out a window was hopefully fluttering around through her mind falsely, Ruby gave up on the search. However, it was obvious enough to Ruby from all the knick-knacks and posters still hanging in the room that whoever lived here after her own team had moved out was partially if not entirely female. Other than height differences, hunters generally had similar builds. And Ruby, not being abnormally tall or short, would probably fit some of their leftovers.
Padding away from the bed slowly, a small skip in her step as she walked, Ruby backed away from Weiss and went over to the room's old neglected dresser. As she opened the door, the habits of her memory had Ruby half expecting to see some golds, or maybe a few yellows... to see one of her older sister's crop tops hanging on the top bar. Or maybe a few purple sashes and turtlenecks, one or two old black bows scattered along the cabinet floor.
'None of Yang's stuff... but at least some of these should fit.' From the clothes at the bottom of the cabinet, fallen off hangers after all the years of neglect, Ruby sifted through the pile at her feet until she found a few shirts and blouses. Whoever the pieces had belonged to, their wearer looked somewhat close to the size Ruby was now.
'Whoever this chick was, she had a boner for green and black, that's for sure...,' Ruby grimaced, holding a shirt up to herself and already imagining the clothing on her. Just how badly would the forest tones clash with her hair?
Without thinking about it, Ruby just threw on a green blouse and a matching pair of track shorts, barely a single shade darker. As she felt the clothing squeeze in on her chest and make it somewhat difficult to breathe, Ruby was forced to rethink the 'somewhat close' statement she'd just made a second earlier.
'Okay, so maybe they're just a smidge too small... these are more Weiss's size... ugh, I can barely breathe...' Stretching the shirt's front and trying to extend the material, Ruby started walking towards the door, hoping Weiss would stay asleep long enough for her to make it back.
Finally stepping out into the hall, holding onto the doorknob and making sure it made no noise as Ruby closed the door behind her, Ruby turned away and slowly started her walk.
The long hall was dark, almost pitch black with the lack of light. If it wasn't for every few dorm rooms a door being open and light spilling through, Ruby would have had to follow along the wall blindly. Although, looking at the sight if in front to her, Ruby almost wished she had been left without the light to see.
It wasn't like the hall was damaged, or that it was dirty or unkempt. But after all these years, it was a sad echo from the grandeur it had once been. In her memory, Ruby could remember sea green walls, ridged with waves and molded perfectly at every seam. There were dark mahogany floors that had been polished to the point where they had nearly sparkled, and the enameling where the walls met the floors and ceiling was so white it would nearly blind you with their brilliance. Every ten feet, there was a small disk of hazy glass flat against the ceiling, hiding strong lights.
The image in front of Ruby was a far cry from those long recalled memories. Now the corridor was worn down, showing the signs of age and neglect they had all experienced. The wallpaper had faded unevenly, in some places the color more akin to shale than the sea, a result of the light from long open doors pounding against walls for years on end. And in certain parts flakes of the textured plaster had started to peel and curl back on itself, revealing the white undercoat it was meant to hide. The floors had lost all their shine, now looking black in the sporadic light. And the lights! While the glass above her remained the same, it was easy enough for Ruby to tell as she looked up that behind each small sheet of glass was a collection of dust mote and other debris to settle over the years.
Shaking her head, Ruby started striding forward into the darkness, trying to care not for the hall she'd entered and more for the one she'd just left.
'You know,' Ruby thought, smiling to herself as she turned around a corner and lost sight of the old team RWBY dorm, 'I just realized... Back in the dorm I thought about Yang, and Blake too even, without having one of my chronic depresso attacks... I guess I should be happy about that... although...' Ruby struggled with the thoughts internally, trying to think of how to express them. 'I, I don't know if I want to move on, all at once with everything...'
While she walked, Ruby just kept on repeating her sister's name over and over in her head, waiting for her good vibes to ebb and fade away. But they never did, and Ruby was able to think and reflect on her sister in earnest. She could even imagine Yang's smiling face in her mind's eye, without feeling as though a knife was twisting in her heart. There was some sadness with the image for Ruby of course, a sort of hollow throb at the base of her throat. But even with that, Ruby's spirits remained where they were.
'I... I miss you sis... You'd be happy, I think... to see me, I don't know, not being a total bitch to Weiss...' Actually gawfing at that point, Ruby chuckled: 'Even though you said you'd break Weiss in two if she ever made me sad, I know you still really cared about her...'
Ruby would have kept going, follow that trail of thought to wherever its conclusion led her, but as she rounded the corner of another long hallway she was interrupted.
With her brisk pace, Ruby had circled through the halls of dorms all the way around to the opposite side of the building from the old team RWBY room. And as she walked, the redhead could hear the quick pattering of feet against soft wooden flooring as someone began catching up behind her. Someone whose identity was easy enough to peg, with the audible spring to the skip in their step.
"...Hey Nora," Ruby sighed, just as the ginger in question caught up to her in the darkness. Pulling up next to Ruby, matching the redhead's pace and falling in sync with her stride, Nora failed at any attempt at nonchalance as she looked Ruby up and down with wide eyes.
"...So are you going to keep staring all day, or are you gonna just get to asking whatever's on your mind?"
"H-Hey Ruby," was the usually bubbling girl's only reply, with a sort of jittery undertone to her voice that was extremely out of place. "I didn't see you yesterday."
"Hmph," Ruby smirked, in the back of her mind wondering how long they were going to beat around the bush. "Yeah, I slept in pretty late, and then was busy the rest of the day. I really hope it wasn't too much trouble."
"No, no, course not... you weren't missed," Nora mumbled. She seemed to think that what she said had multiple ways of being taken, and she started stuttering: "I-I meant, nobody was looking for you or wondering where you'd disappeared off to. It wasn't like we were glad you weren't around either..."
Ruby smirked at Nora, finding amusement in the girl's floundering. "Good to hear, I'd hate to have Jaune peg me as a slacker... definitely wouldn't want that..."
"So... ummm...," Nora stalled, bouncing down on the tips of her toes.
"Yes...," Ruby slowly drawled, turning another corner, her hand trialing along the cracking wallpaper as she walked. She'd run her hand up and down the wall, leaving waves of dust in her wake. Every once in a while she'd hear the sound of old plaster cracking as her fingers caught on the peeling walls.
"I, well, I checked up to see how you were doing last night, and you weren't in your room." Nora elbowed Ruby at that point, a bit of her edginess starting to fade. "After the waterworks, I wanted to make sure you weren't... weren't, I don't know, in need of a slap or something."
"I was doing pretty well," Ruby smirked, enjoying Nora's returning humor. "You set me straight, got me out of my room and off to see Weiss."
"Oh, um... that's g-good." Nora caught the small tidbit of information that Ruby dropped, although to the redhead's disappointment, after the few seconds of silence that followed it seemed like the usually ADD girl wasn't going to bite today.
"Nora?"
At the call of her name girl in question flinched, jumping so far off the ground that she was momentarily a head taller than Ruby before she came back down. "Yes?"
Without missing a step in her stride, Ruby turned toward Nora and smiled, simply grinning a: "Thank you."
"...uh, you're welcome? I guess?" Not sure at what Ruby was getting that, a little dense this early in the morning; Nora just smiled up at the redhead.
And at that point, they came to Ruby's stop. Weiss's... now her door. "Well Nora, here's where we part ways. You don't mind if I bail and catch up with you a bit later?"
"Uh, what? I, uh... sure?" Nora seemed at a loss, not really comprehending where they'd ended their brief chat at. "But wait a second... what's with the whole green getup?"
"Oh, this? I uh... I guess I lost my clothes last night," Ruby replied, slipping through the door and closing it behind her without any more explanation. Once she was inside Ruby stood by the door and pressed her ear up against the thin wood. The redhead waited there and listened for a few seconds. Until the silence she'd left behind was broken by a short squeal of excited understanding. And followed a half second later by the pounding feet as the ginger took off running down the hall.
'I wonder how fast gossip spreads when it's only four people,' Ruby mused, knowing that if they hadn't already guessed, that everyone else would be filled in by Nora the moment she tracked them down.
'Hmmm... oh, dust, please just let me sleep in an extra five minutes... I don't want to have to get up yet...,' Weiss groaned to herself, as she slowly felt herself drift upward out of her nightly splashes of color.
That was how Weiss would describe them... Always so colorful, the small red and blue flashes Weiss could barely recall after her dreams often left her more confused than when she'd been in the midst of them. Waking up slowly, Weiss already couldn't remember much more than a few flashes of rose gardens and floating mountain ranges, the odd images of upside down forests and stalagmite filled deserts dancing behind her closed eyelids.
Lying there on her side, hoping she'd get to return and explore whatever the dream had been further, Weiss tried returning to her sleep. But after a few wasted minutes, where all Weiss was able to accomplish was growing a sense of aggravation at her slowly clearing mind, she had to give up and just wonder if those dreams would ever return to her.
Stretching, Weiss's fingers ran along the bed sheet, skimming the surface of the smooth satin underneath her as she reached out. But instead of running into another body, like she'd been expecting, Weiss's hands eventually curled over the edge of the bed, feeling nothing. All she felt was a pile of extra bedding, clutched up against her.
'Did she...?'
Weiss's momentary worry was quickly erased, as a hand caught hers. "Hey...," was the simple reply she got, telling the blonde everything she'd wanted to know. That Ruby was there.
"Hey," Weiss murmured, smiling as she felt the bed rock when Ruby sat down on a corner.
"I wasn't expecting to see you lying in bed, wasting daylight like this." While Weiss hadn't opened her eyes yet, she could just hear the crooked smile on Ruby's face. "What happened to my good ol' up at the crack of dawn with a whistle and schedule partner?"
"I caved her head in with a crowbar a decade ago..." Weiss joked, her still sleepy voice getting a laugh out of Ruby. "It's a perk of having an actual room to myself that I've been enjoying... no stress, worries, or real reason to sleep light..." But, with Ruby's good point, Weiss pushed herself up off the bed and rubbed the crust from her eyes.
"So, are you losing that perk with me around?" Ruby joked: "Maybe I should sleep in the hall... If I stay, you won't have an actual room to yourseeeelllllf..."
"Six of one I guess... there are a few perks for each side," Weiss hummed, actually opening her eyes and looking around her.
For a few seconds, Weiss had to close her eyes to slits, the early morning sunlight that spilled into her room blindingly bright. But after a few seconds she acclimated, and once she got a look around her, Weiss commented on the first thing that came to mind.
"...Green?" In the morning dawn, Ruby was clearly dressed in deep emerald. The shirt was a bit too tight, Weiss could tell by the way the fabric was bunching up at around the middle of the redhead's back, right where the tips of her hair ended and just barely curled up. "Why are you even dressed?"
Ruby just shrugged. "I wanted to go take a walk, couldn't find any of my clothes..." Rolling her shoulders, Ruby turned towards Weiss and grimaced. "I won't be wearing these again. They're more your speed Weiss... I'm a bit too big for them."
"Pfft," Weiss smirked, grimacing at the colors. "Times may be desperate, but even now I wouldn't be caught dead wearing forest green..." Remembering an old phrase she'd herd around the campus back in her youth, Weiss faked her best Mistralian accent and drawled: "I'd rather be caught walk'n round starkers mate, be perfectly honest..."
"Hello Velvet," Ruby sighed, twisting and pulling the shirt off over her head without looking at Weiss. "Good to hear you aren't dead... I guess I didn't see those clickers take a chunk out of your jugular after all..." After a few seconds, Ruby turned towards Weiss and held her hand out with the shirt in it. "Do you know where mine went?"
"Uh... yeah, it was..." Weiss started, vaguely remembering where it'd gotten tossed. Finally Weiss's eyes landed on the back of the dejected radiator, looking neglected and rusted after years of going unused. Thrown haphazardly over the top, half disappearing between the beige painted metal pipes and the burgundy wall behind it was a piece of red fabric, crisscrossed with scattered strands of white.
Nodding to the shirt, Weiss answered: "Yep, over there."
"Thanks..." But instead of moving for the shirt, Ruby just lied down next to Weiss, barely jostling the bed as she flopped down. "So, I wanted to talk to you about something..."
"Shoot." In the back of her mind, Weiss thought: 'Can't be that bad.'
"Well," Ruby started, rolling her jaw as she thought. "I was thinking of taking a trip. Just off Beacon's campus, towa-"
"NOPE!"
Wide eyed, still with a smirk on her face, Ruby simmered at the blond next to her: "Would you let me finish?"
"Finish what? That you are out of your fucking mind?!" Her voice more incredulous than biting, Weiss cut Ruby off and said: "After everything that has gone on in the past few days, how the hell could you think I'd be up for that?!"
"Weiss, just hear me o-"
"Oh no, there will be no 'hear me out' today!" Rolling forward so she was sitting up straight, Weiss looked down on Ruby, who was still lying on her side against the soft sheets. "Are you drunk? High? ...Both?!"
Rolling her eyes, Ruby just flopped back onto the bed, knitting her fingers together and slipping them behind her head. "Come on Weiss, I've-"
"No!" Standing up, now her entire height above Ruby, Weiss hopped over the redhead and to the floor beside the bed. She winced as she landed, the hard floor cold under her feet somewhat unforgiving after being wrapped in warm covers the entire night. "Aren't you supposed to be the overly protective, safety psycho out of the two of us?!"
Ruby made this sort of annoyed hiss in the back of her throat, more a grumble than anything else really. "I'm just wan-"
"To go through all the stuff we had to deal with to get Nora again," Weiss roared, finishing Ruby's sentence for her. Stalking back and forth in front of Ruby, Weiss tried imagining what the redhead would want so bad as to suggest going back into Beacon for.
"Why the hell would we go back there again on a whim?!" Whirling on Ruby, Weiss pulled her head high and sneered in a mocking copy of Ruby's voice. "Ooooooh, well well and all that, what do I have to fear? I'm an untouchable, badass waste lander who can't get hit by a bullet without making the shooter piss themselves after all. How can she say no? I got myself into Weiss's pants last night, and I'm such a stud that she'll definitely go with anything I have to say, no questions asked..."
"Just when have I ever said 'well well'?" Smirking at Weiss, trying her hardest not to start smiling at the blonde's mini tirade, Ruby started to ask: "Could you let me say-"
"No, you may not 'say' whatever snappy comeback you were going to throw at me!" Stopping her pacing and throwing her arms out to the side, Weiss hissed: "Didn't you tell me Nora said 'she'd be giving hand jobs out' if we hadn't saved her?"
At this point having to actually fight the laugh, the short and feisty woman in front of her doing an ill job at intimidating, Ruby added meekly: "Not to correct you to just correct you, but the quote was about blowjobs actually..."
"OH MY GOD, EVEN BETTER THEN," Weiss exclaimed, her voice singing through two octaves. "And you're the one saying we go out there," the blonde exclaimed, pointing out the window to emphasize her point, "out to exactly where Nora ended up almost giving blowjobs. It's bad enough what happened to her, and not to say Nora isn't pretty, but I am waaaaaay hotter than Nora. Just imagine for a second what would happen to ME if we got caught!"
That did it. The wide eyed expression on Weiss's face, as though what she had said was totally obvious. With it Ruby burst out laughing, actually clutching her sides as curled up on her side.
Weiss was caught off guard. On one hand, she was annoyed Ruby wasn't taking her seriously, or that she hadn't been. On the other... she loved the sound. The soft peal, the hidden light raspiness that came from the bottom of the redhead's lungs when she laughed for real.
'I haven't heard that sound in a good five years...'
"That," Ruby sighed, whipping away tears from the corners of her eyes, "was the most conceited, self-centered, shallowest thing I've heard you say in quite a long time..."
"Y-yeah... that may be... But still," Weiss started, before Ruby cut in."
"First off, you are absolutely right about that 'badass wastelander' part," Ruby chuckled, swinging her legs off the bed and perching herself on the edge. "And the stud bit too. But...," Ruby hummed, absentmindedly feeling around the indented sun on her chest with the side of her thumb, "you may be a tad off base with the untouchable part... "
"Hmph!" Looking away, Weiss tried to hide the blush on her face, the light pink that she could already feel splashing up across her cheekbones.
"Come 'ere," Ruby sighed, reaching out for Weiss from her spot on the bed.
"Like hell I will," Weiss grumbled, although she didn't step away, and didn't stop Ruby from catching her hand either.
Caught, Ruby slowly reeled the blonde back in, a small twitch pulling her lips up as watched Weiss slowly drift towards her. "First off, if I thought all I'd have to do to get you to do what I want would be to seduce you...," the redhead joked, "I'd have taken off more than just my shirt."
Weiss snapped in aggravation: "And why don't you go put on a shirt then? You know where it is... and you better not start leaving clothes around like a slob, like you would when we were kids!"
Instead of answering, Ruby absentmindedly muttered: "You know, these pants are actually starting to feel a bit tighter..."
Rolling her eyes, although Weiss couldn't fight the blush that lightly tinged her cheeks rouge, she tried ignoring Ruby. "You seem t-"
"...And going back to that untouchable part," Ruby hummed, thinking of what would be best to say on that. Pulling Weiss towards her by their interlocked fingers, Ruby twisted her own so that the back of the blonde's palm was pressed against the sun on the redhead's chest.
"...As we can both see, the phrases 'untouchable' and 'scar coated' are kind of conflicting, aren't they?"
"Hmm...," Weiss sighed, her shoulders sagging. "How about "scar-dusted" then?" Fighting off a smile, still trying to make it seem like she wasn't going to budge, Weiss added: "A bit more romantic to phrase it that way, don't you think?"
"I guess... anyway, you really should let me finish." With a wicked smile, Ruby asked: "Do you even know where I want to go?"
"Does it matter? Like I said before, just because I'm giving us a shot doesn't mean I'm just going to roll over to whatever you want."
Ruby nodded along, listening to Weiss with a look that was so focused the blonde momentarily thought it was meant to be mocking. "True, true...," Ruby agreed with a sigh, although she sounded half sad that she didn't have Weiss dancing on puppet strings. After a second, Ruby looked up at Weiss through wide, silver eyes. And there was a new look in them, another long lost remnant of their past.
A playful glimmer, the shine of a child who was a step ahead on a corny joke.
"I never said I wanted to go into Beacon ... if you'd listened to me, you'd have known I want to head out..."
Weiss couldn't stand to look at Ruby right now. Every time she did, she wanted to roll her eyes. If Weiss kept looking, there was a pretty good chance that they'd up and roll out of her skull.
'If I have to see that smug, gloating grin on her face one more time, I'll slap it off her...'
It was almost as if Ruby was psychic. She knew exactly when she shouldn't be talking, and exactly when to ignore that urge.
"See? I told you that if you'd listen to me you'd end up liking what I had to say," Ruby cooed, walking alongside Weiss, the coattails from her red jacket swishing back and forth behind her. After they'd left the old RWBY dorm, they breezed by Ruby's room so that she could change. Now they were both wearing traveling gear. Ruby's heavy boots clunked with each step as they walked side by side down the long hall leading to the front entrance.
Ruby'd convinced Weiss on leaving. But it didn't mean that they were being fools. Namely, in the fact that they were both armed to the teeth, and were still making a stop by the armory even though they were nearly fully stocked on bullets.
With all the weapons strapped to their hips and slung off their shoulders, they didn't feel the need to weigh themselves down any more and bring packs... If everything went well, they wouldn't be gone for more than two or three hours.
"Shut it," Weiss growled irately. "I'm still not too sure about-"
"About what!" Walking along besides Weiss, not entirely surly yet nowhere near as soft as she'd sounded in their room this morning, Ruby exclaimed: "We're heading out towards the perimeter of the city, but still staying far behind the trip wire lines. No clickers, no people, no worries..."
"I guess...," Weiss sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "But, well... you have to agree that it's a bit frivolous..."
"You haven't wanted to make the trip?" Cocking an eyebrow at Weiss, Ruby muttered: "Cause I'll be honest, it was probably... I don't know, number three on my to-do list after we got set up here."
"I didn't say that, I just said it was dangerous..."
"Actually, you said it was frivolous." Grinning at Weiss, enjoying the scowl that appeared on the shorter girls face, Ruby added: "I haven't heard one hint of the word 'dangerous' in our bickering."
Weiss just kept on glaring, until she eventually turned on a heel and stalked away, disappearing out of sight behind the sliced up oak door a dozen or so feet away from where Ruby stayed standing.
Standing there smiling, Ruby watched Weiss leave. She was so absorbed in Weiss, that she almost missed the footsteps approaching her from behind. 'They always come from behind,' Ruby mused, turning around just in time to see Mrs. High and Mr. Low walking up.
"Hey guys," Ruby smiled, her hands hidden in her coat pockets. She never knew what to do with her hands, especially while she was talking.
Ren only nodded, barely tilting his head to Ruby, acting as his normal subdued self. Nora, on the other hand, looked like she was about to explode.
"Ruby," Nora started, walking up to the girl in question and grabbing her by both of her shoulders. "You're going to tell me everything."
"Is that an order?" Looking down at Nora, fighting to keep her face plain as she stood there with the shorter woman hanging off her, Ruby replied: "What if it's a letdown?"
"Ruby, you're going to tell me everything!" She gave the redhead a small shake, and added: "Also, good to see you in your colors. Green didn't suit you..."
"Thanks for the compliment… and while I'd love to stay and chat," Ruby muttered, raising a hand and brushing Nora's off, " I actually have a bit of an errand to run." Looking over Nora's head, she made eye contact with Ren and asked: "You okay holding the fort for a few hours?"
"Yes. Pyrrha and Jaune are off watching bells, so it's just us." Ren's face stayed blank as he watched Ruby's reaction to his words, until after a few seconds he finally raised an eyebrow and asked: "Errand?"
"Don't worry," Ruby started, in the back of her mind noticing that Weiss had drifted out of the armory room and to her side. "We'll be careful, back before you can say 'bye'."
"Bye," Ren mumbled, groaning a half second latter at the bad joke he stumbled into.
"You think they're talking about anything besides us?"
Taking a swing at a rock, nothing more than a small jagged pebble the same color as the faded blacktop beneath their feet really, Ruby shrugged her shoulders. "I honestly doubt it. But hell, what else do they have to do? Play chess for the ten thousandth time? I'd be talking about it too..."
As they went down the street, kicking at rocks and other scraps as they walked, the pair came up to an old chain link fence. "Damn, I forgot this was here... Cut or jump?" Ruby fingered the blade of the knife stuck through her belt loop, imagining how long it would take to get through the thin, rusted strings of brassed metal. With the right tools, Ruby wouldn't have even stopped to ask, she would have just cut her way through. But with nothing more than a hunting knife, it'd take a while to get through.
Weiss looked the fence in front of them up and down, probably thinking the same thing's the woman next to her had. Ruby would have guess Weiss would say to go through, but after a few seconds she sighed and muttered: "... I don't think either of us want to spend the time it'd take to grind a link down... give me a boost."
Hooking her fingers together, Ruby let Weiss step into her hands and lifted the blonde up, to the point where her torso was clear over the top of the fence. Once Weiss was up high enough, Ruby felt Weiss's weight leave her hands, as the blonde shoved her foot into the chain links and climbed over the top.
By the time Weiss was over the fence, Ruby had already started climbing after her. When Weiss hit the ground, Ruby had made it to the top. And as soon as Weiss took a step forward, the sound of the redhead landing lightly echoed through the alley right behind the blonde.
"You sure you haven't lost your semblance?" Grumbling angrily, Weiss sighed: "I don't thinks there's any way you could be that fast unless you lied to me for the few years…"
"Pfft, as if. You know I'm too quick for y-"
Suddenly, off maybe ten or so feet in front of them, both Ruby and Weiss heard a noise that ended their banter. It startled Weiss, and shot cold, sharp daggers of fear through Ruby.
A soft, muffled sneeze.
Both of their arms snapped up, a rifle in one set and a pistol held up in the other respectably. Ruby stepped in front of Weiss, her feet carrying her forward without even noticing the motion.
"I won't even think about blowing your head off," Ruby growled, edging more and more in front of Weiss. The sniffle had come from up on her right, just passed a corner down the alleyway. The gap was actually a bit of an optical illusion, and Ruby probably wouldn't have seen the gap between this building and the next until she passed it.
There were a few seconds of silence, where a bystander would have heard a pin drop if they'd listened. The only sound in the entire alley way was the sound of Ruby's hollow, shaky breathing. And maybe her heart pounding, although the redhead wasn't sure if it was only blaringly loud in her own ears or in Weiss's as well.
Breaking the silence was the sound of rustling fabric, from the same place where the sniffle had come from. As if the figure was pushing itself off a wall, and turning around the corner on light feet.
Around the corner the person turned, their dull eyes suddenly widening to total shock. Out of stunned recognition.
Ruby and Weiss were both just as surprised, and it took a couple of seconds for either of them to make a sound. Finally, Ruby was able to break the silence.
"...Sun?!"
Pretty fluffy chapter in my opinion… hope you all liked it. Alright, first authors note in a while... I've got a lot to say again.
If you take anything away from what I have to say here, in all of this, I just want to say thank you. In the most sincere way I can make strokes on a keyboard convey my feelings, thank you. For all the new followers, and all my old ones as well. To everybody who's pushed me forward and given me that bit of extra drive to keep on going with this story. I remember I used to sit around and look at the metrics on the planning page, and say to myself
And it's not like it just blindsided me now. I've been noticing the numbers rising all this time, and pretty much explode in the last two months. But I liked this idea of the stoic and nonchalant writer who just shrugs off his small successes and keeps on marching. While in reality, every time I refresh my mailbox and see "Joe Shmoe has favorited..." I have to keep myself from getting too excited in the middle of one of my classes.
So thank you for all that. It's really, really cool.
And now to where I become a downer...
Sorry for this chapter taking so long to come out. I had issues with this piece, I scrapped it twice, and even after all of that I had to take a long time ironing them out of this one until I wasn't too bothered. And now I'm working out kinks in the next chapter. That, plus me finally getting my hands on Bloodborne (which I have some heated opinions on) really slowed me down.
No promises, because I will never put out a chapter before I think it's ready, but I'm gonna try to speed up. Now that the semester is winding down to an end, I have more time to myself. Which will hopefully mean more time to actually write out the chapters in fewer sittings.
Criticism always helps, if you have opinions I'd really like to hear them.
So, I'll see you around! Stop by again soon!