Chapter 3

Pinky-Promise

Љ

Tears stained snowy white cheeks that lay hard on a pillow, stained with the selfsame salty fluid that seemed to refuse to abate. Hair the solid white of an eternal blizzard lay sprawled in all directions across the pillow and bedding beneath. Under a posh cover, made of fine silks imported from Vacuo, a very distraught woman's chest rose and fell with hitched breaths that bespoke a torrent of furious wailing ready to let loose at any moment.

The sun was not yet up, though the star's bright radial tethers were lighting the sky a bright violet with its first peeking tendrils. It wouldn't have mattered, however, were it the middle of the day as the blinds in the private dorm-room were drawn tightly shut. The lone source of light, buried off in a far corner under a pile of books and clothes, was a dust-powered alarm clock that continually blinked its display of the current time.

A faint chime rang from the buried little device, rousing eyes that were normally the cool blue of ice, now bloodshot and tear-strained, with a distinct look of ire and disdain. The woman's barely-pink lips curled tightly upward in a snarl as the sound pierced the pile she'd buried the clock under.

"Damn you…" she muttered, throwing the cover from her body and standing angrily from her warm bed.

Dreams had haunted her all through the night, refusing to allow her even a moment's rest for her trouble. Only four days had now passed since the incident, yet still the images of its possible outcomes burned in her head like a raging inferno. Almost as if to combat this blaze, her tears had fallen nearly nonstop since that evening.

The torrent was made only worse by the look of those silver eyes that had regarded her that night. That gaze, from the one that swooped in to try and rescue her, had held such earnest and pleading sympathy behind it. It fully and truly pissed her off.

"Shut up!" the woman, one fully and completely infuriated, and quite possibly well on the way to going mad, Weiss Schnee, yelled.

Her furious shout was accompanied shortly after by the thudding rustle of books and clothes bursting from a neat-ish pile, tumbling all over each other and onto the thinly-carpeted floor, as she ripped the offending object from the nest she'd made to hide it. She then spun around on the ball of her foot and heaved the poor little device over her shoulder, sending it hard into the wall only a few feet from her bed's headrest.

It burst wonderfully into countless tiny pieces, scattering all across her room, as the heiress breathed raggedly in the afterglow of her wroth outburst.

As the myriad of tiny pieces fell, some still linked together enough to work, one of which being the screen that continued to attest that the time was o-six-hundred hours, Weiss' wild eyes settled onto another flickering source of light in her otherwise dark room. It sat on the nightstand beside her bed, flashing mutedly with its bright-orange flicker, not even a foot from where the clock had just exploded. She knew what it was, knew very well despite the early hour of this predictably awful Wednesday morning.

It was her muster-instructor, calling once again at the precise moment that homeroom was supposed to commence. The instructor, who might have seemed only worried and intent on checking up on her delinquent student, had another reason for the wellness call. Another reason, that is, with which Weiss was all too familiar to simply play along, especially now that her entire air of professionalism and primness had been so thoroughly sundered.

Winter Schnee, the heiress' muster-instructor and older sister both, was calling to see why, precisely, the heiress apparent of the Schnee Dust Company was tardy for muster for a third day in a row. Furthermore, she was also calling, for a third day in a row at precisely o-six-hundred hours, to see exactly why the heiress apparent to Remnant's most prestigious company had been caught cavorting in a nightclub. This, along with the fact that she had been spotted after her disguise, which was a mask of all things, was torn from her, bore heavy consideration and questioning, the approach to which could not be made in public or allowed to be seen or heard by the masses.

Yes, the impeccable and ever prudent Winter Schnee was calling to see why her former-little sister had been found in a strip club, heavens forfend, and now refused to answer for her detestable actions.

The scroll kept ringing, silently since the heiress had muted it the moment she staggered back into her room ninety-six hours earlier, as these maddening diatribes warred furiously inside Weiss' fevered mind. It kept on blinking and blinking as it silently told her that someone, and a very important someone at that, was waiting anxiously on the other end to give her a righteously deserved chiding.

Weiss wanted little more than to simply crawl into her bed, hiding herself tightly under the covers, and go back to sleep. She wanted neither food nor water, nor even to run to the restroom and alleviate herself, so much as she simply wished to try once more for some slumber. She wanted only to curl up and beg her mind for some black rest, knowing full well it would only give her nightmares for her trouble.

So, Weiss did. She crawled into the bed, the soft and luxurious bed gifted to the Schnee Dust Company's heiress apparent, and hid herself under the posh covers, the lavish bedspread made of fine Vacuo silks. She sobbed and hiccupped with the incessant tears for some hours as she desperately bid herself to forget and fall into slumber.

She tried, yet sleep refused her entry into its hallowed halls.

α

The hallway was so much longer than she'd expected, its finely appointed majesty seeming to stretch on forever, the woman very nearly lost herself in admiration as she stepped slowly down the lavish corridor. The walls were papered, of all things in this day and age, with a well-designed pattern that looked almost as though it were an artistic representation of the Fibonacci Sequence. The floral patterns, embossed in gold over a backdrop of ivory, grew and shrank in mesmerizing sequence with each other, spinning and twirling captivatingly as she passed them by.

Her boots, the sort she only donned when not attending classes, made a muffled click on the thinly applied carpet. It was the distinct click that told one the carpet was only there so the eyesore most knew as concrete would not have to be directly seen.

A pile of books and papers, considerably large to one that has never attended such a prestigious place of learning as this, bounced and shifted with each distracted step. The top book, which threatened more than a few times to spill from the pile, proclaimed itself to be the definitive authority on the introduction to psychology. As the woman lolled along, her steps becoming ever slower and more contemplative, the book shifted lazily to her left and teetered fantastically. With but a few more steps, it was sure to fall.

She took two more lazy paces and it did, indeed, let go of its perch atop the pile.

With a surprised yelp and the swooshing sound of paper scattering through the air, the book toppled its mountain over with it as the entire gaggle fell to the thinly-carpeted floor. It landed on its face and made a rather comic thud.

"Shoot!" the woman yelled in her high pitch, dropping to a crouch immediately as she desperately restacked the pile.

She grabbed page after page from the air, still falling gracefully from the sudden commotion, and piled them in an even more disheveled mess. She went for the books next, laying the stack of pages atop the first before piling the other three on top of it. Her silver eyes were nearly ready to burst with tears in her frustration.

"I could really use some coffee…" she muttered under her breath, inching her fingers under the pile of learning material and hoisting it up once more.

She brought the pile back to where it had formerly rested, leaning against her bosom and stomach, and began down the hallway once more. The topmost book, now one which declared itself the definitive authority on business economics, third revised edition, shifted once as though it would start the whole process over again. The woman, silver eyes blazing with sudden determination, moved like a blur of quicksilver to stop its fall. She shifted her bodyweight and leaned hard, letting the book slide in the opposite direction, before correcting her stance.

Another student at the other end of the hall, behind the clumsy woman with her pile of books and papers, could make out little more than a red blur as she moved. He decided it was time to quit the stimulants that helped him stay awake in class after studying all night as she walked on, entirely unaware that she had shaken someone's idea of how the world works.

Winding her way through the lavishly decorated hall, which rested in the building reserved for distinguished attendees of the university, the woman eventually found the placard she had been searching for.

Room 77; private accommodations, do not disturb.

She read it three then four times, wanting to be doubly sure that she was not about to disturb the wrong distinguished personage from whatever it was such people did at this late hour. Before knocking on the door, which was made of some brilliantly painted metal that resembled fine black oak, she checked the little wristwatch she always wore.

Shifting the books expertly, leaning them against her left shoulder, she lifted her right hand and tilted the wrist toward her gaze. A little face showing the image of a grinning Cheshire, something she'd cherished since her beloved older sister had given it to her, held the blinking display of eighteen-hundred hours in its maw.

She moved the books back into place before taking a deep breath and making her move. With utter innocence of intent, and no small lack of knowledge on proper manners, she reared her left foot back and slammed the booted appendage into the bottom of the metal door. The impact was soft, as much so as a steel-toed combat boot can be, but rang loudly enough to be heard down the hall.

There was a muffled thud and something that sounded distinctly like cursing from behind the door.

Ђ

Weiss tossed and turned as sweat beaded all along her pallid skin. Her cover, that posh throw made of fine silks from the west, had been kicked off hours ago in her restless tumbling. Now she lay exposed in her still dark room, a thin nightgown of satin clinging tightly to her sweaty form. Despite the cool interior of her air-conditioned private quarters, the rollicking haunts within her head beleaguered her body to ever elevated temperatures.

In her mind she sat in that dark alley, huddled under her desperate hidey-hole made up of forgotten pallets. A fierce storm had broken out and drenched everything her around in a torrential rain. From the wall at the far end of the alley, a tidal wave of the blackest ichor coalesced and tore down the bricked passage.

She heard the watery warble trouncing toward her and, entirely unable to stop herself, crawled from her hiding place to see it. The tsunami of ichor took her immediately, washing the heiress from the relatively inconspicuous dark of the alley into the open street that simply teemed with people. It spilled her into the road, binding her to the ground as it slammed upon her relentlessly, and seemed to sap every ounce of strength that had formerly filled her muscles.

She coughed and choked as it seemed unwilling to end, finally being given reprieve in the worst way possible.

The ichor fled into the concrete beneath her, as though the ground had opened up to swallow it all, and revealed the crowd that gathered around her. Their forms were mostly an indistinguishable blur of shade and smoke, with viciously curved grins full of fangs, as the group crowded around the struggling heiress.

Then came flashes, loud and bright and clacking incessantly, as cameras too entered the fray. Murmurs of mad and incomprehensible nonsense flooded her ears not long after the shutter-clacks. Some muttered in awe and dismay, others sputtering in a clatter of excitement and elation. She opened her eyes weakly to regard the crowd, seeing only a spinning blur of black and white.

As she stared helplessly into the sickening whirl, it suddenly stopped. It was like a pinwheel had been abruptly slammed into a hard surface, violently halting its delicate rhythm. Weiss' head began to pound and scream with nausea at almost the exact same moment. It flooded in like the wave of ooze that had carried her into the street and displayed her before the crowd of gawkers, robbing what little remained of her miniscule will to resist.

Just as the feeling was becoming too much, making the woman feel as though she would simply die of the overload to her senses, the crowd parted and a figure she could make out stepped from between the mass.

She was wrapped tightly in a mesmerizing dress that was missing nearly all of its lower half, ripped off from mid-thigh down. It was the same endless black as the crowd around the woman, its monotone interrupted by snowy-white skin peeking teasingly through. Eyes of a hauntingly silver hue, the sort that only finely polished silver possessed, regarded her with unbridled pity and woe. They almost seemed to ask her why; why she'd done this and why she'd ran.

She stared at the figure hard, trying to recognize who it was and why it felt so familiar to her. As she did, the figure stepped closer. This sent a jolt of revulsion and terror through the heiress, making her feel as though she had to get away from the figure at any cost. She realized, as she struggled to try and flee the approaching figure, that this would not be possible.

The figure took a knee beside her and leaned close as if it would speak when a sudden bang stole Weiss from her fetid slumber.

Icy-blue eyes streaked with shoots of red popped open almost audibly as the sound reverberated loudly through the dark room. At the same time, the woman's body instinctively flexed as she did something similar to the motions of a forward flip. Having been laying limp on her bed only moments earlier, this motion succeeded only in tipping her front half up and sending her tilted form into a sideways tumble.

Weiss hit the ground hard, cursing almost the moment she touched the cool floor. A fresh shoot of pain from her bruised jaw, still healing from that night in the alley, helped bring her fully from the light sheet of slumber that had gripped her.

She pulled her hands beneath herself and shifted her feet, which still lay on the bed, to pull herself fully onto the floor. From there, she lifted herself in the manner of a half-push-up, looking around to see what might have caused the alarmingly loud noise. It would never in a million years occur to her that such a violent noise might be someone's way of knocking on a door.

"Weiss?" called a familiar voice from her door.

The heiress blinked rapidly a few times. She was still in the throes of sleep that left one momentarily stupefied after an abrupt awakening. It was so very familiar; she knew it had to be someone she associated with on a daily basis. Yet, try as she might, she simply couldn't place it.

"Hey… are you ok?" it called again, clearly a woman's voice.

Weiss lifted herself fully from the floor and immediately set to cross the floor, suddenly realizing who it was. She all but punched the button on the right of the door, her open palm nearly crushing the manual release that opened the door without a vocal command. It slid upward, opening to reveal a sight that made Weiss' stomach feel as though it were going to drop out of her.

Her face only barely crested the small mountain of books and papers clutched desperately in her hands, sporting a pitiable grin that said she was ready to vanish completely of embarrassment. Her black hair spilled in a feathered mess along her cheeks, reaching down to touch small shoulders that shook lightly with the strain of the stack's weight. The red tints at the end of her messy locks, which looked too well blended to be anything but natural, as odd as that may be, shimmered healthily in the soft light from the wall sconces.

"These books are really heavy…" she half-sighed, half-squeaked. The teary glimmer of her silver eyes said this statement was nothing if not true.

Weiss had half a mind to simply close the door and pretend this hadn't happened, returning to her bed to simply continue her mad pursuit of sleep that would not come. It was the memory of what this woman had done, still vibrantly alive and well in her mind's eye, that bade the heiress to do otherwise. With a reluctant sigh, she stepped to the side and turned her gaze from the woman holding the little mountain of learning materials.

"Get in before I change my mind…" she nearly growled.

Ђ

Even in the revealing light of the powerful fluorescents, which loudly showcased every overturned piece of furniture and every carelessly strewn book, the room was like nothing Ruby had ever had the pleasure of being in. Her silver gaze danced all around, taking in every posh appointment of the heiress' private room. From the elegant desk in the far corner, shaped like something belonged in one of Atlas' mighty airships rather than any sort of school, to the unmade bed, which still looked every bit as luxurious as it surely was, perhaps only ten feet from the plush chair she sat in. Even the coffee table in front of her, which now sported many scratches across its veneered surface, looked as though a decently light restoration would see that it easily fetched ten or twenty-thousand Lien.

It was undeniably the room of someone on equal ground with a princess or diplomat, regardless of the messy and disheveled shape it stood in at the present moment. Ruby's heart sank just a tad as she pondered what must have brought about such a violent disturbance in the tenant to so thoroughly wreck the place. She knew well what it was and felt red heat creep into her face as she considered her own fault in the matter, no matter how miniscule.

Her eyes listed from their present station, gazing deeply into a picture frame on the nightstand beside the bed. They drifted to the source of a droning noise that sounded remarkably similar to bacon frying in just a little too much heat. It came from a door that the heiress had disappeared into some fifteen minutes earlier, stating that she needed to wake herself up better before being bothered.

"I hope she's not too mad…" Ruby muttered to herself dejectedly.

She watched the curtain of steam that drifted lazily from under the solid black door, filling the top of the room as though a sauna lay on the other side. It made her homesick for some reason.

The sound came to a sudden, albeit unnoticed, halt as she watched that mesmerizing curtain of vapor. Ruby was lost entirely in thought as a shuffling came from behind the door, pulled from her errant ponderings only when the black surface rose quickly into the frame. What came next saw to it that her face turned the same color as her namesake-gem.

Weiss walked out brazenly from her bathroom, which was roughly the size of the tiny apartment her present guest rented while attending the university, with nary a stich of clothing on her save for the lavender towel wrapped around her hair.

The light caught every droplet of water that still clung to the heiress, making her pale complexion look as though it were made of glimmering jewels rather than flesh. Her every curve was ridiculously accented and displayed by the shading from the fluorescent glow, captivatingly showcasing her ample gifts to her suddenly red-faced guest.

She crossed the twenty or so feet to her bed and carelessly plopped her bare rump onto it, breasts jiggling lightly with the abrupt motion. Her icy-blues looked every bit of disinterested and aloof, as though lost in some mire of philosophical contemplation, as she seemed to regard the sterile-white of the carpeted floor. Her posture upon sitting was slouched, as though she had never once been scolded by any number of private tutors to remember that proper posture was tantamount to proper manners.

A single drop of water found its way from under the loosely wrapped towel on her head, trailing down the bridge of her nose before dropping unnoticed from the tip.

"Um…" was all Ruby could manage, so thorough was her embarrassment and astonishment at the heiress' seeming lack of decorum.

Weiss turned a look of bemused shock to the woman, whose hair now blended in with her face on the tips where it turned to red. She looked as though a ghost had suddenly popped in to inform her that clothes might be warranted as a guest now joined her in the room. To Ruby, however, she looked very similar to a deer staring down a fast-approaching beowolf, entirely powerless to react in its total surprise.

"Oh, sorry…" Weiss responded listlessly, "I suppose I should put something on, eh?"

The question seemed pointed more to herself than her bewildered guest, though Ruby was too busy observing the details of the floor to notice.

Weiss stood with all the haste of a tortoise and crossed to the armoire that housed her assortment of fineries. She pulled the doors open and disinterestedly shuffled through the hanging dresses and outfits, finally settling on an unremarkable robe of some abhorrently soft material. She tossed it over her shoulders, slipping her arms slowly into the sleeves, before closing the armoire. She forgot, or perhaps didn't care enough, to cinch it closed with the sash that was sewn to it.

Ruby's silver eyes were still firmly affixed to the floor as Weiss resumed her seat, plopping just as carelessly back onto her bed with the robe barely covering the important spots.

"Why did you come here?" the heiress asked slowly, enunciating each word clearly and purposefully.

"Well, I came to give you your handouts." Ruby responded nervously, still eyeing the carpet beneath her boots.

"They're on my desk where I said to leave them, right?" Weiss asked emotionlessly.

"Yeah…"

"So you have no more reason to be here." As the heiress said this, her gaze seemed to wax with a sense of something between regret and relief, "Why don't you go ahead and leave?"

Ruby lifted her gaze, resting her silvers on the heiress' hunched and morose form. The robe thankfully hung just right to as to cover the pert flesh that bulged faintly on her chest, though the side of the right one still poked out enough to be seen. She ignored this as she looked Weiss over, assessing whether she heard what she thought she did in the woman's tone.

It was just as she thought.

"No one knows, Weiss." She stated flatly, trying as much as she could to sound confident and sure.

The gambit paid off perfectly. Weiss immediately tensed up and lifted herself slowly, ponderously, to a straighter posture. Her head turned slowly to look at Ruby, icy-blues locking gaze with polished-silvers. A shoot of empathy and duress bolted down Ruby's spine as they stared eye-to-eye.

"Shut up…" Weiss muttered weakly in response.

"No one knows." Ruby repeated, this time filled with the confidence she previously had to fake.

"I said shut up, damn you!" Weiss suddenly shouted, leaping to her feet as though she might charge.

The robe fluttered open, flashing everything there was to see at the raven-haired woman. Ruby's look of calm and composure, donned while Weiss was somewhere between the mental gates of hell and rock-bottom depression, didn't flee in embarrassment. She merely kept her gaze locked with the heiress', trying her best to get across the certainty of her statement.

"I didn't tell and no one was sober enough to recognize you, Weiss." She continued, watching carefully for any sign of impending violence, "The only ones that might have recognized you were nowhere near. I'm pretty sure the announcer was the only person besides myself that hadn't been drinking."

"You're lying…" the heiress muttered weakly.

"I'm not."

"You couldn't know for sure…"

"I do."

Ruby gave her every response with a stoic face that bespoke absolute certainty, never breaking her stare. She couldn't quite figure out why she'd entered this contest of wills, yet she had no intention now of letting it go and giving up. Whether her partner liked it or not, she would convince her one way or another.

"Is this what's kept you cooped up since Saturday?" Ruby asked with pointed calm and empathy.

"What the hell would you know…" Weiss replied with venom.

"I don't, but I'm worried about you Weiss."

It was true; she was worried. Not in the sense of some deep friendship or some sort of infatuation, but in the sense of true human caring for an ailing fellow. She was earnestly concerned for her partner, who was so clearly shaken that she'd all but abandoned what seemed to be an instinctual level of manners and propriety.

"You're not acting like yourself; you need to let this go, whatever it is, and pull yourself together." Ruby pleaded, "You said that your grades were really important, right?"

"Shut up…"

"You said that you had to be concerned about me, and I know you don't really like me much, because graduating was so important, right?"

"Shut up…"

"I'll help you if you'll open up, Weiss…" Ruby entreated, meaning every bit of it.

"Get Out!" Weiss screamed shrilly and suddenly, eliciting a jump from her worried guest.

Ruby shrunk into the chair at first, worried the woman might finally charge her. When it looked as though there would be no bum rush, no wild lunge of aggression, Ruby stood slowly from the chair and looked at her partner.

The woman's gait was something between feral and drunk, hunched and loose like she had never once been shown how a proper lady stands. The look of fear and hate in her icy-blue eyes told the raven-headed woman it was time to leave well enough alone. It told her the getting was good to be gotten, and she had better do it while she could yet salvage the situation at a later juncture.

It seemed her chosen major was a decent choice after all, though her first patient, unwitting and clearly unwilling, would likely be the toughest case of her future career.

Ruby began to walk for the door, intent to leave as the heiress had so vehemently bid her, when a thought occurred to her. She stopped and turned slowly around, standing her ground as she addressed the wild-looking woman.

"I'm getting off work a little earlier tonight, Weiss." She said calmly, though she shook somewhat on the inside, "Please, get some rest and come see me around one. You can come disguised, I know you need to, but please don't ignore me. I promise you it'll be worth it…"

With that, the woman turned and left the room. Weiss said not a word as she did, instead dropping to her knees and sobbing silently the moment the door slid shut.

Ͼ

The bob of the train was far and away from Weiss' mind as she silently occupied her seat. Each bump and tilt of the car in which she sat, lolled this way and that by the tracks that were as close to level as possible, humanly or otherwise, failed to stir the heiress from her distracted mental wanderings. Once more, for perhaps the fifth time since she'd left her private dorm-room, her mind positively swam with errant ruminations regarding her present ordeal.

She could see her father's face clearly, the look of disappointment and total unfamiliarity in his eyes, as he glared at her from across a conference-room table. She could hear the professional detachment in his voice as he explained, with painfully clear enunciation so the attending committee members could hear well, that, while he had no problem with attraction between like genders, though it was not his preference, such a scandal as this could not be overlooked. She could hear every last word, as clearly as if he sat beside her this very moment delivering his well thought out speech, expounding upon the myriad reasons a Schnee simply could not be seen or thought of attending such a disreputable place as a gentleman's club.

The sheer gall of it…

"Oasis District. All disembarking passengers, please have your tickets ready to present for verification. This message repeats." Barked the conductor, automated though it was, over the train's interior loudspeaker. It took extra care to repeat itself thrice more, just to be sure it was heard and understood by the whole of its ten passengers at this godforsaken hour.

Weiss stood up all but lifelessly and departed much like a ghost. She wisped by the automated teller on her chosen door, flashing the ticket with little thought spared for whether or not the machine actually managed to scan it. The lack of an alarm ringing behind her told her it did, though she cared little and less over that as well.

She left the train station and waltzed into the night as though she fair owned it, paying little heed to the scant traffic that still occupied the roads she had to cross here and there. At this point, with the maddening situation overtaking her, the consequences of not looking both ways afore crossing the street mattered little.

She was bound for where it had begun, her descent into madness and apathy that is, and cared little if another random stroke of fate happened to intervene and whisk her away from it all.

How simply droll…

α

Chrysanthemum sat at her vanity mirror, dabbing away at the last bits of makeup that still clung to her already nigh-perfect skin. The mask she'd borrowed from her coworker, which looked oddly like a phoenix with its fanciful decoration of flaming feathers, lay silent and still beside her. Its hollow eye-sockets looked up at the ceiling, almost as if pleading for a drop a water for a parched throat. The feel it gave off creeped the dancer out, far more than it should've, though not so much as when she'd been wearing it.

She placed the spongey pad, which she used to remove her cosmetics every night after her gamboling, upon a plate carved of Grimm ivory. It rested neatly in its little basin as she averted her gaze from the mirror, turning it up and to the right to spy a clock nestled on the far wall. The large hand pointed due-left while the small one lay just behind the first numeral, telling her the time was getting close.

She turned her gaze back, grasping and twisting a little brass handle just below her mirror. A faucet directly beneath whooshed to life as warm, clear water poured in a gentle stream. She placed her hands together and collected as much as she could, splashing it along her skin to finish the process of removal.

After drying with a nearby hand towel, she stood to leave. It was once she'd reached the door that she remembered the last bit of her after-work ritual.

The dancer turned around and walked back to her spot, her private place of preparation, and reached her hands to grasp the sides of her head. With a gentle tug, much like a soldier removing his helmet, she lifted the incredibly realistic head of false hair from her true locks, allowing the raven-black tresses to fall freely around her face. She placed the wig on its resting place, an eerie plaster head that sat lonely on the desk beneath the mirror, and turned to leave.

This time she did, heading for the backdoor reserved only for dancers and management. She passed through the long hallway that led to it, walking briskly past the imposing bouncers and under the odd flickering lamps that hung above. She was somewhat off put by the burly individuals, most of which looked like dropouts from one of Remnant's many combat schools, but found herself grateful for their presence all the same.

It somehow reminded her, if only a little, of the one that used to protect her when she was little.

She opened up the rear door, a large slat of iron that sat on nearly greaseless hinges and only unlocked if you wore your ID bracelet. It squeaked and squalled as though it wished to wake the dead, protesting every last millimeter it was forced to move.

She then stepped into the back-alley that led to the street, 43rd to be precise, and headed for the well-lit sidewalk she could see even now. Her combat boots, the ones she wouldn't dare wear while attending classes, left a dull click in her wake with every step. It echoed pleasantly as she proceeded to where she imagined the heiress would show up, if she did indeed show up at all.

When she arrived at her chosen waiting place, underneath a little palm tree that hung gaudily over the street, the woman lifted her hands and placed them behind her head. She interlaced her fingers and leaned against the out-of-place tree, whistling a tune quietly to herself as she waited. It also reminded her of someone she was now separated from, though this person she now recalled was separated by the veil between here and the beyond rather than mere miles.

All the same, she whistled that comforting and slightly depressing tune while she awaited the heiress, watching the street much like a hawk.

Ђ

"Come on; I know a better place to talk than this."

That is what she had said, the very moment the heiress approached the silver-eyed woman leaning against the tree. No hellos, no good evenings, no glad-to-see-you; just a short, succinct instruction to follow before walking off as though she knew the heiress would be right behind. The woman certainly had no lack of confidence this night, which seemed unusual considering her typical disposition. Enthralled as she was by this, as well as the intriguing getup she wore this eve, Weiss decided to follow as she was bid.

Yet, follow or not, the attitude and circumstances certainly pissed her off.

They proceeded down the street some ways before turning off onto another, heading from 43rd onto 58th and proceeding further. Their stroll was mostly silent and entirely uneventful, save for the odd vehicle that would slow down significantly as it passed by. The drivers of these vehicles, most of which were, unsurprisingly, men, made no effort to hide their shameless ogling of the two attractive young women.

Though Weiss sported the mask Ruby had loaned her, it still curdled her blood each time one would pass. She felt certain her identity was blown already and that one would pass by, turn off onto a hidden street and stop to make a call. It wouldn't be long after that that her father, or more likely some of his goons, would show up to whisk the errant-heiress apparent off for that stern lecture that undoubtedly awaited.

"I told you: no one knows." Ruby said suddenly, commandingly and yet sweetly, as they continued along.

Weiss' face lit up a bright red almost instantly as her flesh began to feel hot enough to light her mask ablaze. She had to bite her tongue, quite literally, to stifle the sudden outburst that begged release.

"Is it our teacher?" Ruby continued, this time with a question.

The heiress thought for a moment, trying to piece the meaning together.

"Is the resemblance that strong?" she answered with her own question.

"She looks like you, only older and somehow more boring and prudish."

Ruby punctuated this statement with a barely-stifled snort of laughter, only furthering the blaze of ire growing under the heiress' façade.

"We are sisters…" Weiss spoke lowly as she tried to keep her seething temper in check, "I suppose it should be no surprise that we look alike."

"So, is it her then?" Ruby asked again, "Or is it the man in that picture-frame beside your bed?"

Weiss said nothing from there for the rest of their stroll. For another ten, perhaps even fifteen minutes, the heiress spoke not a word to the woman who led the way. She was done, done with it all, and only intended to follow long enough to hear what she had to say before writing it all off. She began to ponder where she should purchase a ticket to once the conversation was done.

Vacuo was supposed to be nice this time of year, or so she'd heard.

They eventually turned off the street, passing under a large iron gate that led them onto a narrower cemented path. It winded its way through a large, grassy stretch of land, peeling off into the night like a haunting sliver of grey in almost pitch blackness.

She recognized it at once as the Mt. Olympus Park; a place her father had personally commissioned only ten years earlier. As they proceeded through the darkened path, winding this way and that over the grassy field, she knew full well what the looming structure in the distance was. Silhouetted like a man atop a large platform, an effigy of her grandfather stood proudly with one hand reaching toward the heavens as he held a ledger in the other.

Suddenly, and almost unnoticed by Weiss, Ruby turned hard to the right and left the cement path altogether. The heiress had to speed up her pace a little to make up the distance put between them by her late notice. She caught up just as Ruby entered a thick copse of trees, dogwoods that would bloom magnificently in the next Spring mixed with young firs, finding herself gradually becoming frustrated with the sojourn.

"Is there a point to all this?" she asked loudly, breathing a tad harder from her short jog.

The woman didn't answer, instead merely proceeding on into the little grove. Once more, Weiss heavily considered abandoning the endeavor and making her way back to the station. She chewed over the idea of a midnight egress to some far-off land, where she could abandon and forget the whole of her present conundrum.

As quickly as these thoughts came, however, so too did they quickly dissipate. Weiss simply followed after the woman, deciding she'd not come this far to give up entirely before having satiation for her waxing curiosity. So, on she went, delving deeper into the cluster of dogwoods and firs as Ruby led the way.

They went for only a few minutes longer before Ruby stopped entirely. Weiss very nearly bumped into her as she tried to do the same, succeeding just before her nose stabbed the back of the woman's head.

"This should be good." She said flatly, spinning around to look the heiress in the eye.

Her silver orbs gleamed despite the near total lack of light, something the heiress found oddly intriguing. Their gazes were locked for only a moment before Ruby broke the silence and laid her intent bare.

"Father or sister." She stated, as though Weiss should know full well what she meant.

"What are you on about?!" the heiress replied exasperatedly.

"Which one is it that's worrying you so badly?" Ruby asked again, this time clarifying herself.

Weiss had no intent to answer, not at first, as she found herself stepping slowly backward. When the hard surface of one of the many dogwoods found her back, the woman buckled her knees and slid to the ground. She took a slightly uncomfortable seating, her feet splayed out to either side while her knees lay together in front of her. She looked up at her accuser, or perhaps addressor were one to remain objective, for a time.

The scene was oddly beautiful and yet queerly stirring; a woman to whom the entire world had fair been handed on a silver platter, starring dejectedly up at a woman to whom very little in the way of advantage had ever been visited. Their gaze was locked under the teeny bit of new-moonlight that found them, hidden in the grove of dogwoods at nigh unto two in the wee hours. Silence punctuated their stand-off, their tete-a-tete held in unspoken palaver, as icy-blues gazed unmoving into polished-silvers.

"Why do you even care?" Weiss asked at last, growing fully tired of the entire ordeal.

Ruby's gaze faltered not as she observed the woman for a moment more, watching for any indicator that might tell her what the heiress either would not or could not.

"It's just how I am." She began at last, "I can't just watch someone suffer, whatever the reason, so I have to try and help. Even if I can't, even if it's none of my business, and even if they don't want me to; I have to at least try. Especially for a partner that depends on my performance as much as their own."

These words seemed pretty and pleasant to the heiress, exceedingly so were they true. As she regarded the figure in the dim slats of moonlight, cast as though a trillion little needles of dim light through the canopy of dogwood and fir, Weiss saw no indication to think it anything but true.

This was quite a surprise to her. After all, everyone lies.

"So, this is to help your own ego… This is so you can pat your own back for being a good person?" Weiss prodded, curious to see how the woman would answer.

Ruby only smiled in response, with a look painted over her face that said she knew each and every card held tightly and hidden in the heiress' hand.

"You don't like me, and I'm a little scared of you to be honest." She replied, "I'm still going to help if I can, though. You'll have to tell me which it is, first, though."

Weiss regarded her with quiet reservation from where she sat.

"Father or sister?" Ruby repeated once more.

"It should be obvious, shouldn't it?" Weiss replied at last, averting her eyes as she allowed herself a moment of lowered defenses, "I'm the face of a giant, affluent company. One that holds influence across all of Remnant, second only to Atlas if any at all. I'm the heiress apparent to that monolithic company and I just got caught in this seedy part of the city, trouncing around in disguise to watch naked women dance on a stage…"

She trailed off with that as tears stung at her icy-blues once again. Her breathing hitched a few times before the first hot stream spilled out from the right, a ticklish trickle running along her pale cheek. She could already feel the regret and fury welling up for having exposed herself so. Vacuo, or perhaps even the wilds that teemed with Grimm; anywhere seemed rather better than right here at this very moment.

"Are you that worried about what they think?" Ruby asked plaintively, watching the woman start to fall apart again. She took a few steps closer, closing the distance again before sitting on her heels in front of the mentally-wounded heiress.

"Are you that surprised that I would be?" Weiss replied between expertly hidden hitches of sobbing.

She didn't see the hand that reached out for her, tinier than a grown woman's likely should be, nor did she feel it at first when that hand clasped her left shoulder. When the feeling came to her, the grip was surprisingly strong and comforting; it was warm and soft as that small hand wrapped over top of her long-coat.

"No one knows besides me, Weiss." Ruby reiterated, for the umpteenth time, as Weiss slowly turned her gaze back to her.

The face Weiss saw looking back at her sported a smile that could still a demon's rage, kind and concerned as it was with that unmistakable hint of honesty beneath the surface.

"Everyone lies…" Weiss muttered weakly.

"Well, I guess I'm no one then." Ruby replied frankly.

She kept that soft smile up as she spoke, holding the heiress' shoulder reassuringly all the while. Something stirred in Weiss as this went on, something that she had thought to be dead for a while now. It only twitched, just barely enough to be noticed as it surged weakly through her, but that little movement was enough to be felt and considered.

Weiss' mind cleared somewhat as the tears abated, the feeling quickly dying as it made its way weakly through her being.

"How can I trust you?" Weiss whispered softly, as if begging to be repudiated, "I don't even know you…"

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Ruby replied succinctly once more, retaining her smile as ever, "And you have everything to lose, so why not take a chance at least?"

Weiss considered the truth the woman posed, mulling and chewing it in her fevered mind that had unknowingly begun to pull itself somewhat back together. She did, indeed, stand to lose it all if word got out, so what harm was there in humoring the loveable oaf before her that seemed so intent on earning a chance. A chance for what, Weiss didn't know, and didn't particularly care either, yet still she saw little reason to fight it so fervently when no other options of worth could be found.

She acquiesced, reluctantly, with a markedly heavy sigh as she took hold of the hand on her shoulder. With the gentleness of a harpist, she removed the hand and pushed it back to the woman in front of her. When she opened her icy-blues, which she'd closed tightly while considering the question, what greeted her sight was nothing if not surprising.

Jutting out in front of her, not hardly a foot from her nose, was the woman's pinky. It stood out from the balled fist of her left hand, proudly asking to be embraced by the heiress' matching digit.

"I promise, partner, that your secret's safe with me." Ruby answered before Weiss had even asked her question, "I know what it's like to feel alone when you're doing something, for whatever reason it is you're doing it, and I swear to you I won't betray you. If you like watching women dance, clothed or not, that's your thing and I'm not gonna judge it or rat you out for it."

The silver-eyed woman pushed the finger just a tad closer, as if proclaiming her honesty, and eyed the heiress with a resolve Weiss had not expected to see in her.

"Pinky-promise." She said with all the confidence and bravado that her spirit possessed.

Weiss only eyed the woman and her proffered digit, curious much and more why she seemed so intent on making this pact. It wasn't unwelcome, per se, but it was somewhat unsettling. Everything the heiress knew, everything she believed about humanity, told her that ulterior motive lay behind each and every human gesture. Whether kind and caring or depraved and deviant, all mankind did was for the sole purpose of reaching one's own ends.

She eyed that extended pinky with distrust, yet found herself unable to sense anything but puerile honesty behind the extended gesture. She surprised herself, much and more, as she found her own left hand rising, pinky extended in like manner, to accept the offered kindness and confidence.

"You don't know me, either…" Weiss muttered in faint protest as her pinky wrapped around the other woman's.

Ruby only smiled in response, with the same smile that had decorated her face for the last many minutes, as she gripped her new friend's pinky even tighter. With a soft motion, she pistoned their interlaced hands up and down in a quick pinky-shake. Her face positively glowed with the elation that her offer had been accepted.

"I will keep you secret, Weiss." She replied, happily and energetically, as she performed the pseudo-handshake a few times more, "I swear on this pinky-promise; your secret is safe in my care."

Љ

Weiss lay in her bed, covered to her chin by the silky throw that lay upon her every night, as she stared at her left hand held high above her head. Her curtains were open this early morning, letting in the scant bit of moonlight that tore its way through the dark outside. The clock beside her bed, a replacement for the predecessor which had unfortunately suffered a high-impact collision with her wall, solidly displayed the time in bright-green numerals. It read o-five-forty-five as a little asterisk flashed repeatedly beside the last digit, warning any onlookers that its blaring tone would soon attempt to rouse its sleeping master.

She ignored the little device, which sat also beside the picture-frame on her nightstand, as she tilted her hand back and forth. The scant rays of moonlight lit her pallid complexion magnificently as her icy-blue eyes keened onto the pinky. It was just as pale as the rest of her hand, yet it seemed to pulse vaguely with a heat she could see no indication of. It felt as though it were telling her, in some odd manner she could not mentally grasp, that it had a new sense of gravity to it.

It felt as though some string lay loosely tied to the tiny digit, flying off through the air to some faraway place as it attached her firmly to something else.

"Pinky-promise, huh?" she muttered tiredly, having had no sleep this night either, though the insomnia this time around had come for a wholly different reason, "How childish…"

Yet, though she firmly believed her observation, the thought of it still prodded a wan smile to life across her barely-pink lips.