Look! I did it! I finished a thing!
"Ruby, we need to have a talk."
Immediately, Ruby feels herself tense at the words. She never wants to talk about her issues—never wants to burden everyone else with stuff that she should be dealing with on her own—but right now is an especially bad time for a heart to heart. Her head is still aching, her stomach is still churning uneasily, and her mouth feels like something died in it while she was asleep. And, she still hasn't managed to come up with an excuse to explain any of this away.
All she wants to do is pull the covers up over her head and pretend that none of this ever happened. But judging by the serious expressions on her teammates faces, she's not getting out of this one so easily.
But, she tries anyway. "Really, guys, it's nothing, I'm fine," she insists with a weak smile. "Come on, we don't have time for this, we're going to be late—"
"Right, because you always throw up all over my feet when you're fine," Weiss interrupts her, wrinkling her nose and folding her arms across her chest.
Fair point. Ruby's stomach churns unhappily at the reminder. She swallows hard "Ok, fine, maybe I don't feel great, whatever, it's not a big deal. I've worked through worse. No need to make such a big fuss about it."
"What do you mean you've worked through worse?" Blake frowns at her. Apparently, that wasn't such a reassuring thing to say.
"And nice try, but you're not getting off that easy." Yang's expression is deadly serious. "I know that this isn't just you not feeling well—you smell like uncle Qrow after a rough night." Her sister looks close to tears as she asks "What did you do last night?"
Leave it to Yang to be the one who figures it out. Well, not much point in denying it anymore. Not that it makes this any easier to admit to. "I—" She tears her gaze away from her sister's face, trying desperately to find something to look at that's not the three sets of worried eyes right in front of her. She settles for staring down at her lap. "I couldn't sleep, so I went out to a bar and had a few drinks, that's all."
"Since when are you the type to sneak out and go drinking?" Weiss seems far more upset by this revelation than Ruby had expected. Her mind feels too sluggish for her to really give it any thought, although she does remember a brief flash of Weiss' mother talking about drinking in the dark.
But there's no time to really dwell on it. "It's not like I was drinking illegally or anything," Ruby mutters. "I'm old enough to drink now, and I have my huntress license anyways."
"It sounds like you've given this quite a bit of thought," Blake says quietly, her voice filled with concern.
"Not really," Ruby replies awkwardly, still averting her gaze. "Really guys, you don't need to worry about it. It's not a big deal."
"It is a big deal to me, actually." Yang's tone is pained and desperate. Ruby cringes, and then flinches slightly when her chin is gripped firmly and tilted up until she's looking her sister in the eye. "You don't get to tell me not to worry after I've spent my entire life watching our uncle drink until he can barely function, and just when he decides to stop and get clean, you decide to start doing the exact same thing!" By the end of it, Yang is practically shouting, tears glittering in her eyes as she raises a hand to swipe at them angrily.
"It's not like that, I swear," Ruby protests weakly, trying to find the words to explain to her distraught sister. "I just—"
Blake places a hand on her partner's arm. "You just what, Ruby?" she asks, surprisingly calm in the face of Weiss and Yang's mounting distress.
"I just—" Ruby pauses, swallows hard, and closes her eyes. "I just wanted to stop thinking for a while, and sleep for once, that's all."
There's a beat of silence as her teammates process what she just said. "What do you mean, stop thinking for a while?" Weiss frowns at her.
"I don't know exactly how to explain it." Ruby runs a hand tiredly through her hair, which is a tangled mess. "It's like—at night, when I'm trying to go to bed, I have too much on my mind, too many thoughts, to be able to clear my head and go to sleep."
"What kind of thoughts?" Blake asks gently, taking a seat on the bed next to Ruby.
Ruby shrugs, trying to act nonchalant. "All kinds of stuff. But mostly stuff like worrying about what might be coming next, or thinking about things that could go wrong. Bad what-ifs, that kind of thing."
A part of her is screaming at her to stop, to stop talking about it and revealing the issues that have been plaguing her since she arrived here—and really, well before that—to other people. But a larger part of her knows that there's no getting out of this discussion. And honestly? It's been exhausting trying to deal with this on her own and having no success. Not to mention the fact that she feels like crap.
"That used to happen to me a lot when I first lost my arm," Yang admits quietly. "I'd lie awake for hours just trapped in that moment, or worrying about what was going to happen next." She sighs heavily. "I still have nights like that, but it's gotten a lot better. Talking to dad about what happened helped a lot. I wish you would have talked to us about this before it got this bad." Abruptly, she steps forward and wraps her arms around Ruby, sweeping her into a tight hug. "But please, don't ever do something like that again. Drinking isn't the solution."
"Don't worry, I won't." Ruby laughs weakly. "That stuff tastes nasty, and even though it felt like it helped for a bit, in the end it just made everything worse. I'm not going to do it ever again, I promise."
"Good," Yang murmurs into her hair, before releasing her and taking a step back.
"Why didn't you tell us about any of this?" Weiss asks, sounding hurt. "We could have tried to help."
"I thought I could handle it," Ruby replies dully, before dropping her voice to a mumble. "And I didn't want to bother you guys with my problems when there was so much else going on that you had to deal with."
"But Ruby, that's what we're here for," Weiss says, sounding deeply hurt. "We're your teammates, and your friends. And I'm your partner. We're supposed to help each other when we have problems. It's hard to do that when you won't tell us anything and you hide things like this from us."
"I know," Ruby mutters.
"Please, next time you're struggling, promise that you'll let us help?" Weiss looks at her pleadingly.
"I'll try," Ruby says. She doesn't like to make promises if she's not sure she can keep them. And some old habits can be really hard to break.
"And if you don't want to talk to us about it, there's other people that you can talk to," Blake chimes in. "How much have you been sleeping since we got here?"
Ruby blinks at what seems like an abrupt change in topic. "Uh, not much?" she admits hesitantly. "It takes me a while to fall asleep, and I usually wake up after a few hours."
"Right, I thought so." Blake nods. "I'm pretty sure that Shade Academy has someone you can talk to about this sort of thing, and they can give you something to help you sleep. You don't have to do this on your own, or resort to desperate measures like you did last night."
"That sounds nice," Ruby replies tiredly. This conversation has sapped what little energy she had to begin with, and now she's struggling to stay awake. She stifles a yawn. "So, what do we do now?"
"You're going to take a nap," Blake says with a fond smile. "And Weiss is going to let the others know that we won't be making it to training today." Weiss doesn't protest, just nods, a determined look on her face as she pulls out her scroll.
"I'll stay here with Ruby," Yang volunteers.
"And I'm going to see if there's anyone at the school that you can talk to, Ruby," Blake finishes. "And if there isn't anyone at Shade, then someone nearby in Vacuo. We're going to get you through this, Ruby."
Ruby slumps back against her pillow as she and Weiss head out the door. Without the distraction of talking, she's really feeling every bit of her hangover. She feels like she could sleep for a week.
"Things are going to get better, Ruby, I promise," she hears her sister murmur as she drifts off again. "You just need to let us help you."
Even if it's hard, letting the others help her certainly seems like a better option than sneaking out to bars in the middle of the night. The time for desperate measures is over. Now, it's time for some actual solutions.
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