The exact week after she had met with Ozpin, she had been given a very late pass of admission to Beacon, which, now that she thought about it, probably took someone else's spot on the waitlist. She didn't know how Torchwick had been able to gather so much on her in such a short amount of time. It made her question why he would need someone else to keep an eye on her. Through the hours she had spent waiting for Ruby's arrival to the airship that would take her to the campus for the very first time, she had only derived one suitable answer: tasking Ruby with keeping tabs on her old self would keep her out of the way, with physical evidence that she was keeping busy with his project while eliminating one of the tasks he had prepared to complete on his own time. All of this premise remained contingent on the fact that Ruby was avoiding the government to prevent herself from getting into a pile of trouble, and that Torchwick's threat looming over her would keep her from doing anything he told her not to do.
Ruby groaned and put her face in her hands. He doesn't even care who I am or what my secret is. It's as if all he considers relevant is the fact that I was a problem to him and that he has something to exploit. But is his disinterest in who I am and what my motivation something I can exploit? Going behind a man's back to save his life hardly seemed to have positive turnout, but how would Torchwick react if she were to tell him the truth? Would he write her off as crazy, or would he get just enough to correct the mistakes he made the first time and waste her? Ruby wanted to live as long as she possibly could even if she was just going to die or cease to exist anyway.
It was not hard at all for Ruby to spot herself in the crowd. Back then, she was not necessarily known for social awareness, not even now would she respond properly to social cues, and she flounced across the floor, squealing excitedly. She remembered Velvet with her camera. Would she believe her if she said she was taking pictures for artistic purposes?
Perhaps initially, but Ruby would have to confine her surveillance of her to strict methods. She did not take her camera out, instead removing the notepad from her bag. Glancing at her watch, she wrote, "Arrived at the Beacon Air Ferry station at approximately 10:45 AM. Airship is to leave at 11:00."
Ruby frowned. Torchwick would be dissatisfied if she were only to return with this without writing anything else. She sighed and contemplated following her, but she knew that security would be incredibly strict and all it would take was for someone to ask to see her student ID.
Besides, she remembered her first day like it was yesterday. The air ferry ride took about twenty minutes to get from the residential district up to the cliffside Beacon hovered over. She wrote details down on her notepad as they occurred to her.
"Staying in the Cereus Hall, room 415. Spent most of her time inside Beacon's facilities with no other anomalous activity to record at this time."
Rising to her feet, Ruby adjusted the strap across her chest as she looked at the airship with longing. She sighed and walked out of the station.
Ruby had found a barber on the same street she lived on that would cut her hair for the price of two sodas from the convenience store next door, but she decided that spending ten dollars on a pair of shears would have been a better idea. You get what you pay for.
She entered her apartment, throwing the bag aside, and pulled the strap over her head to set on the table beside the door. It wasn't until Ruby had removed her jacket, sat down in front of a mirror, and prepared to cut a layer of fringe that she had finally noticed Torchwick sitting on the couch, arms spread across the couch. Did she always have a couch?
Reversing her grip on the scissors, she swiveled in her seat and stood, shears pointed at him. "What are you doing here?"
He leaned forward, taking time in standing up. "I called the prepaid I gave you, but you didn't pick up."
"Prepaid?"
Torchwick lifted his hand to his head, pinky finger and thumb pointed in opposite directions. Ruby walked to the bag on the table. Fishing it out, Ruby heard Torchwick stand up and shuffle his feet across the carpet in his approach to her. Upon finding it, she flipped it open and read, "1 New Missed Call."
"It didn't ring," she remarked.
"I know," he said, standing over her shoulder.
Ruby jumped, his sudden proximity frightening her.
"That's why I chose it."
Ruby turned over her shoulder and looked up at him, feeling meek as his eyes simmered.
"What did you get so far?"
Ruby turned and pulled the notebook out, handing it to him.
He took it from her as soon as she held it up. At the first page, he raised an eyebrow. "You're already on her tail?"
She nodded, unsure what this detail would mean to him.
"How did you even manage to find her that quickly?"
"I did some research at an Internet café," Ruby responded.
He flipped through the next pages, skimming. Squinting, he looked at the details she scribbled in her haste to leave the station. If he was suspicious, he said nothing to indicate it, flipping the notebook shut and handing it back to her. Ruby held it protectively over her chest, hugging it as if it were a shield.
"Don't do that again. I'll find you something you can work with." He looked around her apartment. The stray details of his torment fluttered across every surface—Ruby still hadn't finished cleaning up. Ruby reminded herself: deadbolt.
"Do you prefer that I don't use a phone?"
"That might be a good idea," he said. "I forgot—no professional training."
Ruby frowned, but he was right. Before she had arrived, she had handled no covert objectives in her work as a huntress. Ruby was sure she would manage to screw it up somehow, sneezing at the wrong time and ruining everything.
"I'll have you put everything into a file and send it to me over email."
Ruby raised an eyebrow. "Wouldn't that be unsafe?"
"Not if you use a secure line with the proper hardware," he responded.
"I don't understand," she said. "What's so interesting about this Ruby girl?" She knew damn well why, but how would he have known so early on that she would continue to pursue him?
"I have the feeling that I'll be seeing her around." He looked at her. Ruby counted her blessings as he gave her only three seconds of speculation before turning away.
"How are you able to avoid the police so well if you don't do anything to obstruct your face when you're out in public?"
"My eyes are a little closer together than you would expect, and as you can probably tell, I wear copious amounts of makeup to skew the perception of my facial features.
Ruby mentally reviewed the mugshot the police had taken the first time he went to prison. The features of his face looked harder, confident in their defined shape. Without it, he looked softer. His lips were a paler shade of mauve skin, eyelashes hard to see, and the green wasn't as aggressive as she remembered it to be. Perhaps it was the eyeliner. He assimilated in the upper residential district well, wearing pressed clothes that expose a wider breadth of skin than his usual attire, hair styled in popular fashion—if Roman hadn't taken up a life of crime, maybe he could find work as a model. Blushing, Ruby pushed the thought away and focused on cooling her cheeks.
He turned back to her and squinted. "What?" he retorted
The sun was setting, shining through the window and reflecting off the lashes above his eyes.
Ruby turned her face away from the light. "Nothing."
He looked at the shears, still held tightly in her fist. "Were you going to cut bangs?"
Snapping out of her reverie, Ruby looked back at him. "Yeah."
"Don't. Your hair looks good all one length."
Torchwick left shortly thereafter, having finalized the new terms of their arrangement, one of them being that he would show up whenever he wanted. The unfortunate fact of the matter was that he could let himself in without a key and that she could only lock him out if she were inside first, and he knew just enough that he could show up before she arrived.
Ruby found a place in the apartment that she hoped he wouldn't check: the heating vent. There, she jotted down new ideas and potential plans to sneak into Torchwick's apartment and look around.
Their work relationship may allow for some maneuverability, but Ruby still had her own job to do, outside of the work he was employing her to complete.
Successfully establishing a full page of points, she pressed her face to the wall as she taped the paper to the other side of the wall just beneath the vent. She pressed the heating vent back into place and pushed the couch in front of it.
Ruby turned the pencil over in her hand, not knowing what she should do next. The sun set; Beacon's curfew for first-year students came and passed an hour ago. She would be able to write down the exact time that she returned to her dorm that night. She didn't know there was curfew, and she had to use her semblance to slip just under the wire. 8:59 PM. Ruby knew that it might have been a good idea to write it down, but her memory didn't extend to other nights, and she should only stick with things she wouldn't have to justify. If she started to lie, he would catch her immediately. It's been three years, and she was still a terrible liar.
Pulling her knees to her face, Ruby sat for a very long time and watched the shadows move as the sun disappeared behind the mountains and allowed the full brilliance of the moon to shine through.
