Author's Note:

A couple weeks ago, the laptop I've used to write basically all of my fanfics crapped out on me. Luckily, the hard drive was fine, so I took some time to play amateur computer archeologist and everything has worked out so far. Among the files that I recovered that weren't backed up anywhere else was this chapter. I wrote this chapter in June, but held off on posting under the mindset that I would hold onto it until I knew I could more confidently devote time to continuing this story. Then the previously described events happened, leaving me briefly disappointed that I never posted it, which leads us here.

Long story short, I wrote this chapter on a whim, and I might write another. We'll see...

Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY or any of its characters. Please support the official release.

Chapter 11

She had insisted on red. Qrow had tried to dissuade her, saying it was too flashy and that a huntress didn't need to draw more attention to herself. Ruby had made up her mind, however, and Qrow realized that pushing against her was a losing battle.

With the matter settled and the individual pieces of Ruby's project painted to her liking, Qrow watched on as Ruby reassembled them. He always found it amusing how precise and meticulous she was, given how she could barely sit still on most days. If being Ruby's teacher had taught Qrow anything about her, it was her ability to focus when something mattered enough to her.

"Not too tight now," Qrow advised once it became clear they were coming to the end.

"Too loose doesn't work either," Ruby argued softly, not looking up as she spun the screwdriver in her hand one more time.

Qrow grunted, recalling an incident from a few weeks ago. A loose bolt had led to the blade of the weapon flying across the workshop when Ruby had triggered the conversion mechanism. Luckily, the end result had only been a single broken window, though that had been enough to almost cost them their privileges when it came to access to the tool shed they were currently working in. They did still receive one of Tai's scoldings, though he had only been about half as angry as he wanted them to think he was.

There was also the fact that they were in the final stages, and Ruby was mostly fine-tuning at this point. If Qrow was disappointed in just one thing, it was how little he had actually contributed to the process. He was proud too, of course, knowing how Ruby had taken care of most of the research and labor on her own, but he hadn't done much more than give advice in the specific moments that Ruby asked for it. Ruby had said that building her weapon was personal, and with the recent missions he had to take, Qrow hadn't been in a position to argue.

"Okay..." Ruby said as she set the screwdriver down. Gently picking up her weapon, she stood and turned to face Qrow. Though her hands were still and her breathing steady, her eyes wandering around the shed said that she was nervous.

"You okay, Kiddo?" Qrow asked calmly.

"Of course!" Ruby's attention snapped forward, still nervous, but also smiling. "You ready?"

Qrow smirked. "Would you get on with it already?"

Without skipping a beat, Ruby triggered the conversion mechanism, allowing her scythe to unfold in her hands. She gave it a single, graceful twirl, the shed around them just big enough that she could do so without hitting anything. She brought the scythe to rest by draping it over her shoulder.

"What do ya think?" Ruby asked eagerly.

Qrow shrugged. "It's okay, I guess."

Ruby raised an eyebrow. "You guess?"

"I didn't say anything bad?"

"But how can that be your only reaction?" Ruby brought the weapon around and held it forward, like she was trying to give him a better view of it. "I mean... look at her!"

Qrow tilted his head to one side. "Her?"

"Yes, her..." Ruby narrowed her eyes at him. "Stop staring at me like that."

"Like what?" Qrow mostly managed to avoid laughing under his breath.

"Like you think I'm being funny."

"Well, you are a bit of a weirdo." Qrow paused briefly as Ruby started to pout. Realizing she needed more than her nonchalant uncle at the moment, he took a deep breath and changed tactics. "What matters is how your weapon feels to you."

"She feels like a part of me..." Ruby spoke slowly, pausing to look down at her scythe as though her words were written on it. "Like I'm holding a piece of myself that I never want to be without again. I can't imagine ever using another weapon."

Qrow's thoughts stalled for a moment, a brief flash of memories from his days at Beacon occupying his mind. Summer had been much the same, not only with her fixation on weapons but also the link between a weapon and the person who wielded it. She had believed a weapon said a lot about its owner, a notion Qrow had shared with Ruby long ago, so the response he had just heard shouldn't have been so much of a shock.

"Is something wrong?" Ruby asked after the silence between them went on for a bit.

"Nothing..." Qrow shook his head, trying to bring his thoughts back to the present. "Your mother used to talk like that is all."

Ruby let off a nervous laugh. "Funny you bring her up, because I settled on a name."

"Have you?"

"Yep..." Ruby cleared her throat, and held up her scythe again. "Uncle Qrow, meet Crescent Rose."

One more memory flash cropped up, this one of Summer cutting through a pack of Grimm with her own weapon, Sundered Rose. Qrow was quite familiar with his partner's ax, able to convert to a powerful rifle at a moments notice, a feature he was well aware that Ruby had incorporated into her own scythe. Again, he should have been less surprised.

Qrow looked up again, finding Ruby giving him a questioning stare. At a glance, he would have said she looked confused, but Ruby was a bit more perceptive than a lot of people gave her credit for. Of course, what she could be perceiving was anyone's guess at this moment. She was more than likely trying to track the variety of emotions that were all over his face.

"Yeah..." Qrow exhaled, letting himself smile. "Your mom would definitely get a kick out of that."

"So I did good?" Ruby replied, though seemed content either way.

"Come on," Qrow said with a nod as he stood and opened the shed's door. "Let's see if we can't take Crescent Rose through her paces."

"If you can even keep up with us, old man." In the blink of an eye, Ruby was a cloud of rose petals racing through the door.

"So obsessed with weapons and a brat on top of that, huh, Summer?" Qrow muttered, though was also somewhat relieved. It was reassuring to know something he'd had a hand in had turned out alright.

Qrow woke up slowly and gently, a sensation completely at odds with his current situation. He had expected comically loud footsteps followed by pounding on his cell door, but apparently was being let off easy this morning. Still, how peaceful it was almost made him feel more uneasy.

Looking down at his left shoulder, Summer was still at his side, soft breathing being the only noise he heard from her. Qrow stared for another couple seconds, questioning a hallucination's need to sleep, but decided to add that to the list of questions for the shrink he had never hired. Escape and survival seemed a bit more important than his sanity at the moment.

Turning his senses outward, Qrow tried to gather what little information he could. The lack of windows of any kind meant it was difficult to confirm the time of day, but his gut told him that he hadn't woken up in the middle of the night. He would be willing to bet that the sun had just started to rise.

Qrow also noted how still everything around him was, lacking the distinct vibration of an Atlas airship in flight. Hazel's plan hadn't gone into motion yet, whatever it might be. Granted, capturing an enemy armory, added to the fact that Hazel didn't come across as the most creative individual, didn't leave much open to interpretation. Hazel wanted to attack something, with Beacon seeming to be the most likely target. That said, while Vale's defenses were still being restored, they were still strong enough to withstand the attack of a single airship.

There was a piece to this plan that Qrow was still missing, one he was never going to find by sitting in this cell. His options remained to either find a way to escape, or remain patient so that Ruby, Yang, or whoever else Oscar had dug up could figure out his location. Whichever was the case, Qrow couldn't help but worry that he had waited too long, that his chance had come and gone and that he was already too late. He would try anyway, but he had to assume that time was not on his side.

The Rainart family's "daily meeting" was a relatively new tradition, and not one that Greger looked forward to. He tried imagining having breakfast in their family home, talking about school or whatever else normal families talked about at gatherings like these, and genuinely couldn't determine if that sounded more or less appealing than the debriefings he was currently subject to.

Yet, somehow the fact that he was not the only one who felt this way made things worse. As usual, his mother was the last to join them, slowly walking onto the ship's bridge while pinching the bridge of her nose. Greger couldn't recall a single meeting that Phaela hadn't been hungover for, and it didn't take a particularly insightful person to determine that his father's patience was thinning out.

"We've been waiting," Hazel stated as he crossed his arms.

"Yes, I'm sure we have so much to go over," Phaela replied, strained sarcasm pouring off her.

"As a matter of fact, we do." Hazel's voice remained calm while his eyes narrowed.

"All of which I'm sure can be summarized as 'we have a lot of weapons to use on Ozpin, and we leave tomorrow'." Phaela paused and waited, as though she got some enjoyment out of poking at the Rainart patriarch. "Did I leave anything out?"

Hazel continued to remain still and quiet, which didn't help the tension in the room. Greger turned to his twin sister, finding that Hana was displaying a bit more emotion than that. She was annoyed, and had expressed annoyance at their mother's lack of commitment in the past, though there was also a hesitancy to her in this moment. Greger simply wanted the moment to pass so he could go about his day, the less time he spent in the same room as the rest of his family the better.

"Actually, I wanted to discuss contingency plans in case our location is compromised," Hazel finally declared.

Phaela rolled her eyes. "Which shouldn't be an issue because Ozpin's brats don't know where to find us."

Hazel sighed. "Regardless, I believe-"

"I wasn't talking to you," Phaela growled.

Hazel raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"You two..." Phaela turned around slowly, setting Greger and Hana in her sights. "You're all squirmy, and your nerves are radiating off you so intensely that it's making my migraine worse."

Greger tried to slow his breathing, hoping to deny his mother's empath powers anything to detect. Unfortunately, he knew better than to expect the same from his sister.

"It's nothing," Hana insisted, almost too quickly.

"Don't lie to me!" Phaela hissed, jabbing a finger in her daughter's face and causing her to flinch. "What did you do?"

"She sought out Team RWBY last night," Greger explained, realizing that this argument was happening one way or another.

"You sellout!" Hana barked, only silenced by the stomping of a foot.

Hazel took a step towards Greger. "Why didn't you stop her?"

Greger stepped backwards. "I tried-"

"And you failed."

"We weren't followed," Hana claimed.

"That we know of." Greger glared in his twin's direction.

"Would you stop-!"

"Enough!" Hazel's shout caused the room to shake and go silent.

Greger chanced a look around, to see the rest of the room's reactions. Only Phaela seemed unfazed, simply crossing her arms and rolling her eyes again while he and Hana shrank in their father's presence.

"We're making preparations to move up our timetable," Hazel ordered. "Hana, complete the weapons inventory. Greger, monitor security and communications and alert the ship should anyone approach. Phaela-"

"I'll be ready." Phaela was already halfway out of the room by the time Hazel turned to face her.

Sighing and shaking his head, he departed the room as well, with Hana not far behind him. Left alone, Greger sat himself in one of the bridge's active consoles.

Staring at the monitor, Greger found himself wondering what changes Ozpin's death would bring to their family. For a time, he had hoped it would bring some peace to them, remove the disdain for each other that had festered over the years. More recently, however, he wondered if there would really be anything left for them once the coming battle was over.

Blake was far from being a stranger to long nights. In her attempts to keep them from worrying about her, she had once tried to convince her team that Faunus required less sleep than humans. That and all other attempts proved fruitless, of course, becoming a series of reminders of how much they cared for her well-being.

Pausing as the inn Team RWBY was staying at entered her line of sight, Blake couldn't help but miss those days, when the affection between her and her teammates didn't feel like a complicated ball of yarn. Not that their relationships were all simple, but the first time Yang had said that she loved her had been a relief, a simplification of the mess of feelings shared between the two of them. Yang's most recent confession, on the other hand, made Blake feel like they were reliving their reunion at Haven all those years ago, the most uncertain she had ever felt about where she and her partner stood. Blake would have been lying if she claimed it hadn't been one of the reasons she had stayed up all night.

Regardless of reasoning, however, it might have been worth the night's sleep she had lost. Finding a pair of tracks that matched the profile and pacing of the two youths from the bar, Blake followed them to the village limits, and even tracked them a brief ways into the surrounding forest. While she eventually abstained from her search out of caution, she had a direction to point to, one she was intent on following up on with both daylight and her teammates on her side.

Walking forward and stopping under the inn's shadow, Blake took a moment to glance upwards at an open window. While she knew this particular room was one of the three her group was currently renting, they had not exactly taken any amount of time to determine individual room assignments. She also knew she was long past getting any kind of sleep, but she hoped to rest at least a bit before their search resumed.

Taking a brief moment to make sure she wasn't being watched, Blake began to scale a nearby gutter, only questioning her actions when she was halfway up. Whether her choice of entrance was due to trying to avoid another uncomfortable encounter with Yang or just due to Sun's bad influence, it was difficult to say, though it was likely some combination of the two. With her feet eventually finding purchase on the rooftop, she inched closer to the open window, only hesitating when she heard voices inside.

"Is there another way to open a portal?" Taiyang asked, sounding as though he were leaning right up against the window still.

"Tai, how many ways do you think there are for me to use my semblance?" came Raven's reply, her voice originating from somewhere deeper in the room.

"Have you tried not using your sword?" Tai's half-serious tone sounded all too familiar, as Yang tended to speak similarly when trying to keep the mood light when they were faced with a difficult problem to solve.

"Why would that change anything?" Hints of irritation were present in Raven's words, much to Blake's amusement.

"Have you?"

A notable pause followed before Raven answered. "It wouldn't work. Shut up."

Knowing for certain that she wouldn't be entering through this window, Blake told herself that she should leave. Her legs didn't listen, however, curiosity fighting to get the better of her. Raven's privacy wasn't a concern of hers, as the woman had likely spied on all of them plenty over the years, though Blake did believe that Yang's father deserved better than to be listened in on.

"Seriously, though..." Tai finally continued, making Blake's decision for her. "Could the connection just have been severed? I know the two of you had a falling out at Haven."

"No," Raven responded, her tone almost becoming a bit somber. "I still haven't learned to control the connections. They form on their own, and only break when..."

Raven trailing off in the middle of her explanation didn't come off as any kind of surprise. Blake was well aware of the shadow Summer Rose cast over all of them.

"Fine, that's out," Tai concluded. "Let's get to legwork then."

"I have an idea where to start," Raven said confidently.

"First things first..." Creaking of the wall and window indicated that Tai had stood up straight. "We have to rally the girls."

"And how do you plan on doing that?"

"I figured they'd benefit from a little family support."

A brief silence fell on them, with Blake taking a couple seconds to interpret Tai's words. As her eyes widened with realization, she imagined Raven reacting much the same way.

"That's a terrible idea," Raven declared. "The last thing Yang wants right now is to talk to me."

"You're probably right on that one," Tai conceded, though conviction remained in his voice. "That's why I'm taking Yang."

"Then what is it exactly that you want me to do?" Another pause followed, and it sounded as though Raven's eyebrows rose even higher. "That's an even worse idea."

"I don't see how," Tai argued innocently. "Have the two of you ever had a real conversation?"

"Doesn't that just support my point?"

"You just have to get to know each other. Trust me, she's not as stubborn as Yang." Tai hesitated for a split second, long enough for Blake to raise her own eyebrow. "Well, she's a different kind of stubborn, but my point stands!"

Raven sighed, and Blake found herself agreeing with the sentiment. She was putting serious consideration into stepping through the window and interrupting the conversation, as what Tai was suggesting had all the potential to make their current situation much worse. The only thing stopping her was the question as to whether or not it was her right or business to step in.

"Would it helped if I asked nicely?" Tai's tone telegraphed a goofy grin, one that must have passed along through the Xiao Long genes.

"And has that worked for you historically?" Raven countered, her own tone of voice lightening slightly.

"You agreed to marry me, didn't you?"

Blake turned away, committing to returning to ground level and resting in the inn's lobby. The fact of the matter was that Team RWBY wasn't functioning, as a unit or even as individuals. Blake wasn't ready to trust Raven, but she trusted Tai, and she also conceded that desperate times usually called for desperate measures.

Two sensations caught Ruby's attention as she woke herself up. The first was the mild headache she felt between her eyes, a reminder of her previous night's activities. For better or worse, though, she had stopped drinking early, and her aura would finish its work and keep her from walking around with a hangover all morning.

The second was a pair of slender arms wrapped gently around her stomach, along with a forehead gently nudging against her neck. Ruby glanced over shoulder, less to confirm Weiss' presence and more to see if she was still asleep. Thankfully, her partner's eyes remained closed and her breathing steady and peaceful.

Ruby told herself she needed to get out bed, that she needed to remove herself from this position. Despite how safe she had always felt in Weiss' arms, the voice in her head from the previous night had been right, that she would only disappoint Weiss one day if she didn't outright hurt her.

Instead, Ruby carefully rolled over so that she could face her partner. It was selfish, but through all the chaos that had been the last week of her life, Weiss had been the only part of it that made her feel like her old self. Again, letting go was what she told herself she should have done, but it wasn't what she wanted. Of course, she also knew wanting something wasn't the same as deserving it.

Ruby knew she had messed up. She had let her bad habits and headspace take control of her life at a time when she was supposed to be leading her team. All she had really been able to do was lead them off course and almost sabotage the mission. Yet, they had all followed her anyway, despite her best attempts to convince them not to.

"Why do you keep coming back for me?" Ruby whispered, not sure if she wanted her voice to be heard.

As she delicately brushed her finger across Weiss' cheek to move the one stray hair hanging in front of her face, Ruby took the moment to consider her future. First the immediate future, how she was set on acting like the huntress she was trained to be, as well as potential plans to track down Hazel and complete their mission. She also gave some thought beyond that, how she could quit drinking, and be a better partner to Weiss and teammate to Yang and Blake. She couldn't figure out how just yet, but if the people she loved were set on having her in their lives, then she was set on being better for them.

All these thoughts came to a halt, however, as she heard the door to their room unlatch, followed by a set of footsteps she didn't recognize. Without thinking, Ruby spun around and dove for the nightstand, just barely catching Weiss jerk upright in the corner of her eye. Her hands grabbing hold of Crescent Rose, Ruby triggered the conversion mechanism, only stopping mid-swing upon realizing who had walked in on them.

"Well, at least your instincts are still there," Raven said dryly, having not so much as flinched at the scythe that had almost took her head off.

"What are you doing here?" Ruby demanded, trying to ignore her shaking hands and the cold feeling in her chest.

Raven's eyes stayed locked forward. "We have work to do."