Chapter 3

A House Divided

Ruby strolled down the wide streets of one of Vale's residential districts, away from her borderline disastrous encounter with Headmaster Ozpin. Normally she would take quicker, shadier paths, but with the amount of suspicion she had generated she was willing to bet a hefty sum of lien that they were watching her. It was well into the night by now, and chilly. The streets were abandoned, and her only company were the looming shadows that Vale's street lamps cast whenever she crossed underneath them.

Weiss had been unusually quiet, and after a couple silent minutes Ruby decided to break the ice.

"Ok, I admit it. Thaaat coulda gone better."

Weiss sighed. "I should be used to it, after all these years of working with you."

"At least I got in?" Ruby offered hopefully.

Weiss didn't respond.

Ruby cast furtive glances at the surrounding buildings as she walked. The openness of the streets, combined with the utter lack of other people, was unnerving. Urban apartment complexes rose above her, rooms packed together in orderly blocks, and in the shadows cast by uneven lighting they were like faces that tracked her every move with judgemental eyes. She couldn't shake the feeling that the moment she let her guard down someone or something would strike.

Calm down. If Ozpin sees you slinking about like a spooked wolf it's only going to make things worse.

She couldn't calm down. Weiss's silence wasn't helping.

"Weiss?" she said, voice small, desperate for anything to distract her from the creeping twitchiness that was overtaking her.

"Just thinking," Weiss said. "About our next steps."

Ruby smiled ruefully, although Weiss couldn't see it. "Any plans? Hope they're better than mine. Haven't exactly had a great record recently."

A slight pause. When Weiss spoke again, her words were carefully measured.

"I'm going to try to apply to Beacon. My skills easily meet their standards, and even though it's late for an application a Schnee heiress should be appealing enough that they'd be willing to take me."

"Sounds great," Ruby said after mulling over it for a few seconds. "It would be nice to have support."

Another pause.

"You're not going to like the rest of it." Weiss said softly. "I think you need to go home. Lie low for a while."

Ruby stiffened. Her steps gradually slowed, until she was standing still, a small girl in an abandoned street. The street lamps twinkled above her, but somewhere in the darkness where their light did not shine a cicada chirped a small, lonesome song.

"Why?" Ruby finally asked, her reluctance bleeding through her tone.

"The documents I forged claim you've been homeschooled for the past years," Weiss defended. "You're almost certainly being watched now, and if you don't go back the discrepancy will draw investigation."

Ruby said nothing, but Weiss knew her partner was grasping for any excuse.

The heiress almost felt bad. Ruby was an absolute pain to work with, but they were still partners, and- well, nobody would want to go back to that place.

"I'm sorry," Weiss whispered. "There's no way around it. I know what it's like, but-"

"Don't," Ruby snapped.

"I just- just, well, sympathize, at least a little-"

"I said don't!"

"I'm trying to be nice," Weiss cried, finally losing her temper. "But if you're going to be a child about it either way then I won't waste my breath. Go. Home."

"Fine," Ruby growled. "Fine!" and with a wordless snarl, she ripped the earbuds and mic off, ignoring the flare of pain as the adhesive only reluctantly relinquished contact with her skin, and although she knew it was petty she unceremoniously stuffed them into the pouch at her waist.

She moved again, closer to a run this time, but after a scant few minutes the silence pressed in on her, a giant, clinging weight. Her feet pounded the pavement with increasing tempo until the world whizzed by in a blur, but no matter her speed the buildings watched her, silently criticizing.

She ran, and ran, and ran, but never fast enough.

::-::-::-::-::-::

The island of Patch was half a mile off of Vale's coast, and typically transportation between the two locations was handled by a highly efficient network of Bullheads. There was an ancient, albeit stable, bridge, but the risk of Grimm attacks typically dissuaded travel by that path.

This did not matter to a furious huntress.

It was a long distance to sprint, however, semblance enhanced speed or no, and by the time she reached her destination Ruby was panting with exertion. She took a moment to recover, gazing at the house in front of her forlornly.

Maybe running faster was a bad idea.

The outside of the house looked clean enough. A whitewashed suburban home, fitting snugly into a frame of short wooden fence and a quaint garden. For a moment, Ruby saw it as she distantly remembered it: warm and welcoming, basking in the bright glow of the mid afternoon sun, accompanied by the faint aroma of baking cookies. Most poignant of all, however, was the fleeting impression of a nurturing embrace and loving whispers. She almost reached out, called out, but in a flash the moment passed, and she was once again alone, the cold night air burning her exposed face. With a deep breath, she turned the doorknob, and as she expected the door swung open with a small creak.

The sight of the living room was her first greeting, and contrary to the well maintained exterior signs of disrepair were visible even in the darkness. Spider webs hung thick in the corners, and the carpet bore a series of dark stains that she couldn't remember being there before. There was a piano to the side, but a grey layer of grime marked it as suffering a long period of disuse. The room's limited furniture was fraying badly, and there was no sign of an attempt to repair the damage.

Home sweet home.

Ruby continued on, feet like lead weights as she made her way into the kitchen. Despite the time, a faint glow suggested that the home's other occupant was still awake, and when she got a clear look at the kitchen table she saw him, hunched over, face in hands, surrounded by piles and piles of bottles. The stench of alcohol was suffocating, and Ruby was sure that she was looking at the product of weeks, if not months, of drinking.

She took a deep, haltering breath. "Hi, dad."

He turned around. Taiyang Xiao Long had been a handsome man, once upon a time, and despite the stink of alcohol on his breath and the deep red puffiness around his eyes his face still showed traces of what he had once been. Bright golden hair, trimmed to a business cut, and a well kept beard were evidence that he made an effort to put on appearances, at least during the day, and in the dim lighting Ruby could almost fool herself into seeing him as she once did: tall, strong, solid, loving, with an easy smile and a deep, comforting rumble in his voice.

"Ruby?" he slurred, and the memories shattered before her. "That you?"

"Yeah," Ruby said softly. Her hands fiddled with her skirt, and she couldn't meet his eyes. "Yeah, it's me."

"Haven't seen you in a while," Taiyang mumbled. "Thought maybe you uh, uh, went and died or somethin'. Glad to see you ain't. Dead, that is."

Ruby said nothing, unable to force words past the tightening in her throat.

"So where you been? What's going on for you?" Taiyang continued obliviously.

"Well, um, I got into Beacon," Ruby responded, pointedly ignoring the first part of the question.

Taiyang looked at her quizzically. "Beacon? Don't you have to be eighteen to go to Beacon? You eighteen?"

Ruby flinched away instinctively. "No, dad," she whispered. "I'm fifteen. I got in early."

"What? Fifteen now?" Taiyang said in drunken surprise. "Thought you were twelve."

She laughed hollowly. "Haven't been for a while."

"Apparently." He eyed her suspiciously. "Weren't you at Signal? Qrow said you were. How did you get into Beacon? You didn't cheat, did you?" The questions came hard and fast, as if he didn't expect a detailed answer.

Despite herself, Ruby felt a stab of hurt. "Of course not."

"Good," he said absently.

Another silence dragged on. Ruby shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, eyes still downcast.

"Why're you here?" Taiyang eventually said. "No class?"

"Not for a week."

"I see." Taiyang said, oblivious to his daughter dodging the dangerous portions of his questions. "Staying the night? Your room's still there. Haven't touched it."

"Alright. Thanks." Ruby murmured, unsure of what else to say.

Taiyang grunted in response. "Should sleep. It's late for kiddos."

Ruby finally met his eyes. He was looking straight at her, and she shied away from the intensity of his gaze. Pain permeated his expression, hidden behind a craggy exterior of gruffness, and in a fleeting thought Ruby wondered if he felt regret about- about everything. "Ok," she said. "Good night."

Ruby fled from the kitchen, a photograph of her mother caught her attention from its place above the stairwell, and with her father now out of sight she slowed to scrutinize it. The picture was heavily faded with age, but Summer Rose's gentle smile and bright silver eyes shone through. She'd seen it before; it had been one of her favorites as a child, but now that she was older one specific fact dominated her awareness.

I look just like her.

Faintly, she heard the sounds of muffled sobbing from the kitchen. Her heart thumped a dull, dragging beat, and she turned from the picture, her mom's knowing gaze burning into her back.

Her room lay upstairs, down the hall, third door on the left. As she went up the stairs one of the steps creaked violently, causing her to twitch in surprise. On a whim, she turned to the left one room before her own, entering into a space she had not seen in a long time.

Yang's room.

Taiyang had clearly not made an effort to maintain the room. It was exactly as Ruby remembered it: a child's bed in the corner and a half full bookshelf on the opposite wall, with little else. The room stank with an overpowering musty staleness, and Ruby felt like she was choking on bitter granules of filth with every breath. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust- the mundane kind. One anomaly caught her eye, however, and she made her way over to the bookshelf.

Is it still there?

On the second shelf from the bottom sat a piece of paper, yellow with age. A cartoonish drawing of a wolf was inscribed on it in the misproportioned scrawl of a child old enough to begin to understand drawing but too young to have developed real skill. As she gazed at it, Ruby was assaulted by memory, more an impression than factual recollection, of a desperate bewilderment: a young girl wondering that if she was really, really good maybe, just maybe, her older sister would come back. That maybe a present would work, because didn't everyone love presents?

Yet here it was, undisturbed for years, and combined with the room's disrepair it was obvious Yang had never returned, not even briefly. Ruby turned away, wondering what had compelled her to check.

Her own room was in slightly better shape; it had only been a year or two since her last visit, although that had only been for a night, to get some rest on a mission in Patch. And before that, how long? She sat on her bed, too drained to do much more than dust it off feebly.

Come on Ruby, get it together. It's just for a week.

The words echoed emptily in her thoughts. She tried to smirk, to fall into the tough, competent persona that had been her frequent companion in recent times, but it was fake, feeble, she knew it was, and it fell off her face like an oil slick.

Unsure of what else to do, she got ready for bed, but sleep evaded her, sucked away by the keen ache in her heart.

::-::-::-::-::-::

A/N:

Many thanks to those who left reviews last chapter. I found them immensely encouraging and motivating. Response to this story has been far beyond what I expected, and I'm very grateful.

There's some symbolism and implications in this chapter that I deliberately left unstated, although perhaps some of you may find it too obvious. Anyways, all that just to say that the narration is influenced by the character's point of view, and you're going to need to do some interpretation to get the full picture.

Sorry to those of you who wanted Jaune. There's way more of him coming: Beacon's up next. (The chapters will probably start getting longer too)

Also sorry for the short chapter. I was extremely dissatisfied with the quality of chapter one, so I rewrote it, which took time I would have spent on new stuff.

Reviews are love. Let me know what you think, good or bad, like or hate.