Fate: Well, welcome to our first guest writer, The Loneliest of All.

Lonely: I just want to start off by saying fuck Fate. I'm kidding, I love him.

Fate: Don't tell Max.

Lonely: Well, he'll find out one way or another. So start running, I guess. *kiss*

Fate: Speaking of which, today's theme is regret.

Lonely: I regret those X's.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Regrets

Weiss crossed her arms, looking at Ruby as if she were unsure of exactly what it was she wanted to say. There were quite a few things on her mind, and each one had brought her countless hours of insomnia and anxiety ridden breakdowns inside of her own mind.

Ruby just looked away in response to Weiss's stare. Weiss couldn't help but feel as if she just didn't care as she did, even if she knew that that wasn't the case. In all honesty, Weiss knew that she was at fault as well. They both were for letting it ever get this far.

Weiss's gaze hardened and softened several times as her thoughts shifted from stance to stance. She didn't even know what position she was to take in this argument, if one could even call it that. There was no yelling, screaming, anything even remotely similar to what usually happened in an argument. There was just avoidance. Avoidance and silence.

Most of their conversations had been one sided lately, or about one specific subject that they always seemed to fall back on. There wasn't really all that much variety, Weiss realized. Maybe that was the cause of the problem. Well, not the cause, but perhaps it was a part of it.

"I think I," Weiss paused, not really continuing her sentence as the words died in her throat. She had wanted to say something so terrible, something so bad. But was it how Ruby felt as well? Sometimes Weiss thought so, but she didn't always feel this way, and there were times when she was sure Ruby didn't either.

"You think you what?" Ruby asked quietly. Weiss couldn't really hear the tone of her voice, it was like her ears just stopped working. It was just a question, and she could answer it however she wanted. She could wave it off, she could simply divert the topic.

But in the end, maybe the truth was best. "I regret what we did," Weiss said. "I regret what we did because it caused this. Maybe we wouldn't have become as close as we did had we not done it, but we wouldn't be like this now, if we hadn't."

Ruby just looked down to the floor and nodded. "I don't think I regret it. Things just sort of happened. They turned out this way, and I don't think we could've done anything."

Weiss felt her chest thump painfully. She hated it when she couldn't argue against something, and it happened a lot. She hated when she said something she thought was so utterly tight that no one could say anything against it, only to have her words turned against her in a way she herself couldn't defend or fight off.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to knock something over, destroy something, anything. She wanted to so badly, but in the end the only thing she destroyed was herself. Over and over again until she found comfort in the destruction. Until she found comfort in the hurt, the insanity, the absolute sadness that filled her to the brim until it boiled over.

"Stop making sense," she wanted to cry. "I've no one but myself to blame for all of this, I was stupid to ever think I could give you something like my heart and have it work out!" Instead she just stared down at Ruby, as things just reached a fever pitch in her head.

She wanted to scream out so much more along with those things. She wanted to scream out for Ruby to stop ignoring her, she wanted to scream out for Ruby to stop tearing her apart when she didn't even mean to do so.

She just wanted to feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. She just wanted things to be alright between them. She wanted to be best friends, she wanted to be normal. She didn't want to be whatever fucked up, weird thing they were. If they stayed as such, she knew she'd be hurt. The moment she found some guy to be with, she'd burst into tears and she knew it.

She'd lose herself again to loneliness and push everyone away again. She just knew it.

But she saw no exit, and Ruby just looked away.

One Small Comfort

Ruby gathered what strength was left in her body, trying her hardest to lift her hand up to Jaune's cheek. She flinched at the feeling of the tears wetting his skin as she caressed it, admiring the feeling of his stubble scratching at her slightly.

She could barely feel anything though, and the memories it brought her were only a small comfort in the moment. Her other hand moved to her chest, lightly pressing against the wound, still profusely bleeding. She couldn't help but move down to her stomach afterwards, choking back a sob as the blood smeared against her palm.

Something felt wrong, not just in her lungs, but inside of her. Something was wrong with her, and she knew it. She could feel it so easily. She looked deep into Jaune's eyes, just now noticing how red and swollen they were. In such a short amount of time.

"We're alright," he said softly, "we're alright."

Oh how she wanted to respond, she wanted to confirm his words. She wanted to say it back, but she couldn't. She had promised to never lie to him. She felt weak, and she was quickly getting weaker. The numbness was receding and the pain that she knew she should have felt from the metal pole sticking through her came on fast.

She couldn't even cry out in pain. It was just too intense.

"You'll be alright. You'll be alright. She'll be alright. You have to be... Y-you both have to be okay... Don't leave me alone," Jaune said to himself. Begging for what he knew he couldn't have.

"I-I..." Ruby finally managed to force out, blood pooling in her mouth. "Jaune," she rasped. "I'm sorry. It wasn't meant to turn out... Like this... At least... We got to spend one more night together," she said slowly as her eyes closed.

Jaune couldn't scream, he couldn't feel, he couldn't see. He could only stare. "Please don't... Go... Not so soon... Not with her..."

But she was already gone.

Crushing Loneliness

It was during times like these that Weiss felt the old familiar feeling that so dominated the majority of her childhood, the feeling that drove out all joy in one's heart and replaced it with something much more somber and melancholic in nature. It was the design of humans and Faunus as a whole to become social species' reliant on conversation and feelings given from one another, and it was perhaps normal to live in a position where groups of people were readily available to spend time with on a regular basis. Though it was normal, Weiss didn't follow this pattern of human/Faunus behavior exactly.

She had friends, seven friends to be exact. She spent some time with a few other people, but all of her free time went to the main seven. Her team, and JNPR. There was a feeling of happiness whenever she was with the group, like she had finally broke out of her shell, but when all were busy she was left to her own devices. Weiss disliked these times. She didn't want to be alone.

JNPR were out having fun together, a team outing. Yang was off doing Yang things, and Blake had followed along reluctantly. Ruby was actually with JNPR, having somehow used her cute charms to get to hang out with her crush.

Meaning Weiss had no one. For the first time in such a long time, Weiss was completely, utterly alone. She just sat on her bed as the clock on the wall ticked the seconds off one by one, and each and every tick and tock felt like a weight being added to her conscience. She could be out right now, making friends, meeting new people. But she wasn't. She knew she couldn't, for whatever reason. Being social wasn't second nature for her like it was for everyone else, she couldn't just talk to anyone.

Yang seemed to do it so well. She walked right up to strangers all the time and initiated a friendly chat. She sometimes even flirted with them. Weiss looked at that kind of conversation as a nightmare, and often she watched as Yang left with a smile and a number in her pocket. It had to be satisfying, making friends…

Weiss would freeze up in such a situation, unless she was being the one talked to, and her friends were there with her, providing her with an exit strategy should she do something embarrassing on accident.

Weiss couldn't really get past the truth: she was socially retarded. Slow. Anxious. Whatever word you wanted to use to describe it, it matched perfectly with how she handled social situations.

She grabbed at her legs and curled them up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and burying her face in her knees. It felt like she was just wasting her life at this point, it felt like she wasn't human. How could someone possibly be so antisocial? She was incredibly lucky to even have a social life, but this was starting to happen all too often now.

Everyone else she knew had other people to talk to, other people to hang out with. They had a social connection with people outside of their group. They had multiple groups, and she only had one.

And when the time came for the group to split, she knew that there would be no group. It would be the way it was now. Crushing loneliness. And only occasionally would she find relief from it.

She felt like crying, but no tears came. She felt the weight of the unused time piling upon her with every inhale and exhale, and her heart was pained with the knowledge that she would be alone for hours more. Even longer into the night, she would lay awake and think on this subject, as she so often did. At least then she would be surrounded by her team—by her friends.

She shook her head and fell onto her side, her head hitting her soft pillow with an even softer fwop.

Bringing her hand up to her eyes, she wiped away tears she didn't even know she was crying, and silently studied the lines on her hand; if fortune telling were real, and people really could read the lines on her palm, what would they see?

All she could personally see was heartache and loneliness, but deep within she hungered for more, and deeper within she knew that her home was of sorrow and emptiness and that what she wanted wasn't what she was going to get.

She closed her eyes and let the silence wash over her. It was much too loud, and she disliked it greatly.

Getting up hesitantly, she lazily walked up to the small fan on her desk, turning it on and falling back into bed after the small task was completed.

The noise made it easier to fall asleep. The noise made everything easier. It was almost like static in a way. White noise. Soothing in a way she couldn't even begin to describe. She could get lost in the rhythmic sound of the steel blades cutting the air, propelling it forward. She could get lost.

And before she even knew it, she did.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Fate: Lonely wrote all of these, consider it a triple feature. I think it says something about him considering all of them are rather… bright.

Lonely: Fuck. You. I'm as happy as can goddamn be. Don't tell people I'm not, you asshole. Love you. 3