He could feel the long moments when his mind drifted now.
There was an edge to his clarity, sharp, pinpoint accurate in the way he felt cheated in his life. Anger came to him, but not in the way he expected. It was a dusty, dry sort of rage. It didn't bubble in his gut, or twisted his darker thoughts outward with malicious intent. Perhaps that's what made his anger all the more sinister. it wasn't volatile, and he could think circles around it.
This anger was tolerable in a way it had never been so before. The sort that could loom over him, and he was content to let it do so. It felt right to be so angry, so spurned by the world. To hate every single justification as it came at him.
He tried to rationalize so many things, too many, and it was all starting to blow back in his face. Like a bitter gritty reality, a storm he couldn't climb out of even if he tried. There were no illusions in the way he perceived his situation now. There didn't need to be any, and that was the worst thing he could have imagined.
He could count the cold hard truth on his fingers.
He was a good guy. He tried to do the right thing. He put himself in the path of danger for the sake of others. He cared about Remnant and its many peoples. He donated what little he could to charity, built homes, battled Grimm. He tried to be a remodel, tripping along the way every now and then. Yet, Sun could honestly say he always made an effort to correct his wrongs. He considered himself a good friend when it counted, and he had never been given any evidence to suggest he was anything less than a wonderful mate to Octavia.
His only complaint, of which he found somewhat unforgivable, was his duties as a father. He was away on missions plenty of the time, and didn't know Zhu half as well as he ought to have, but that was a working man's life. A hunter's life, and he had made peace with that. To provide for his family, and his community, he jut couldn't be around as often as he'd like to be.
So then the question became, with all of his best efforts, why did everything always go so wrong?
A lot of things he never felt the need to complain about mingled into his mind, and with all of the negativity surrounding him, there was a bitterness sinking under his skin. A glass of fizzing soda was not the cure to the thoughts rolling around in his head. A game of cards did nothing to keep him busy either. Each one was just another reminder of what he couldn't have.
"We should go for a walk." Ruby suggested, but Sun shuffled the deck and passed out the cards again. Another round of go fish that would never go anywhere. Yet Ruby was persistent, and tried once more. "We can't just sit here all day, Sun."
"Watch me." He answered flatly.
"I can't." Ruby told him. "I can't sit here and watch you just shut down on yourself like this."
"Then don't."
She shook her head. "I can't do that either."
He slapped the cards down on the table harder than he meant to. "Well, knowing you like I do, you're going to do something. You're always so damn busy all the time, you don't know what it's like to sit around and think."
"I don't know what it's like? That's almost funny. A sick joke, sure. Honestly though, is that the best you can do?" Ruby murmured to him, surprised. "If you're going to insult me, you need to do better than that." She picked up the cards, eyeing them thoughtfully.
"I'm not trying to insult you, I'm just done with all of this bullshit." Sun grumbled. "I want to be alone."
"No, Sun, you don't." Ruby sighed. "You don't want to be alone at all, that's the whole problem."
"I can't have what I want." He grumbled.
Suddenly very tired, an old feeling of fatigue washed over Ruby in that instant. She knew it well, like a second skin, and weary sigh landed heavily in the silence. "Listen, I have no idea what you're going through right now, but you have kid to look after."
"He doesn't need me any more than Atlas needs a swarm of Grimm." Sun brushed off. "He'd be better off someplace else."
"As of right now, you're probably right." Ruby whispered. "Maybe he'd be better off if he never knew a thing about you, or Octavia, or anybody you know." Ruby shrugged then. "I might have been better off someplace else, Yang too…but that's not how things work, Sun. The thing is, you're never going to know, and maybe what you think is better off, is actually way worse. Maybe you're the best thing he has, and you just don't see that…"
"You're right." Sun murmured. "I don't see it."
"Then get a clue, and stop being stupid." Ruby hissed. "He needs you, but if you can't see that, then that's your fault." Ruby voice colored with disappointment. "I can't just ignore that, Sun, and I won't. If you can't even try to pull your head out of your butt for his sake, then what the hell was it all for?"
"We wanted a family." Sun murmured after several long moments passed. "Together."
"Zhu is your family, Sun."
"This isn't a family, Ruby." Sun told him. "This isn't even a home. There's nothing here for him anymore. Nothing here for me, either."
"Then, make something." Ruby said as she stood from the kitchen table and crossing over to the refrigerator, grabbing a bottle of water and cracking the lid. She drank deeply from it, as if she were dying of thirst, the plastic crinkling in her hands. "Make something for him, Sun. Don't just sit there grumbling over a deck of cards and lost memories. Actually get off your butt and do something."