Weiss sat in a waiting room chair. Her face was numb from the ice pack she held against it, her ankle throbbed, and several parts of her torso and arms twinged at every slight bit of movement she made. She stared straight ahead but saw nothing. Her mind was blank, simply replaying that moment over and over as the seconds ticked by one by one, trying not to think about the news she might receive.
A flash of red—Ruby's cloak. A splash of red—Ruby's blood. Back and forth her mind bounced between the two images, all the while the ringing of gunshots played faintly in her ears.
"You're here to see Miss Rose?"
The words jolted her back to reality. Her head jerked upward, which caused her to wince. The speaker was a nurse standing by the entrance to the emergency room's central hallway. She was speaking to two people by the reception desk. Weiss recognized one as Ruby's sister. The other—an older man with short hair the same color as Yang's—introduced himself to the nurse. "Taiyang Xiao Long. I'm her father."
"You arrived just in time," said the nurse. "They've finished operating and she is now resting in stable condition. You can go back and see her. Room 216."
Yang rushed through the door without any further delay, her father only pausing to thank the nurse before following after her. The hospital worker scanned the room for a moment until she found Weiss, who'd remained seated.
"Are you going to come back, too?" she asked.
Weiss bit her lip. She'd felt a wave of relief at hearing the words, "stable condition," but it didn't last long. "I . . . I'll give them some time alone together."
"Okay. You're free to go back whenever you're ready." She turned and left.
To add to the physical pain and overwhelming guilt, Weiss now also felt like a coward. She wanted to go to Ruby—to see with her own eyes that she was okay and that the wound wasn't as bad as she feared. But she couldn't bear to face them. Two bullets had been meant for Weiss—one was in the trunk of Blake's car with the Insomniac outfit, lodged into one of the armor plates. The other was in Ruby's shoulder. She just couldn't look her friend's family in the eyes and tell them how it'd gotten there—that if she'd just done the sane thing and said "no", zero guns would have been fired.
At this point, she had to wonder what she was even still doing here. Her hopes of getting a chance to see Ruby alone were now gone, as the Xiao Longs would likely be staying quite a while. But she couldn't just leave—not after what Ruby had done for her. Where would she even go? Back to a cold apartment with a fridge full of spoiled food? Back to the empty safehouse to reminisce over making one of the worst decisions of her life?
It didn't matter. Blake would be back soon with colleagues and a lot of questions. If Weiss chose to avoid answering them by fleeing, Ruby would just take the brunt of it when she woke up. Her life was a mess.
Bang!
Weiss jumped, then let out a small groan. A man had slammed open the same door Ruby's family members had gone through, his pale red eyes trained dangerously on Weiss. The tilted cross dangling from his neck was what jogged her memory. She'd briefly met this man at the same time she met the mayor.
"Schnee!" he said, his tone more forceful than loud. "Get up. We're going for a walk."
"Sir," said the receptionist. "Please keep—"
"Pipe down," he interrupted without moving his gaze off of Weiss. "Let's go."
"Excuse me?" Weiss said, staying firmly rooted in her seat. "Who even are you?"
"I'm the one with questions to ask. If you feel safe answering them in front of all these security cameras—which I highly doubt—then feel free to stay right where you are. Otherwise you'll get off your ass, come outside, and explain to me exactly how the hell my niece wound up here."
"Your . . . your niece?" Then it clicked. "Wait. You're Ruby's 'Uncle Qrow'?"
"That's right. Now get up and let's get to walking."
Weiss looked down at the floor and felt a cold emptiness settle down deep inside her—it seemed that what she'd dreaded had come sooner rather than later. There was no avoiding this. She had to talk, and she'd have to tell him everything. No lies, no half-truths—no more secrets.
"I'm . . . not exactly fit for walking at the moment," she said.
"Then we'll stand," said Qrow. "Whatever it is, we're not doing it here."
"But my ankle."
"What, you twist it?"
"I don't think so. It's just swollen."
The man turned back to the desk. "Get me a crutch, would ya?"
The receptionist, still affronted from having been cut off before, gave him a stern look. "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't just—"
"You can and you will." He pulled out a card and placed it in front of her. "If you've got a problem then take it up with the mayor's office. But right now I'm not exactly in the mood to have my time wasted, so hurry up and get the girl a crutch so she can walk. I can apologize later when I bring it back."
Her reply died before it could reach her lips. She stared down at the card dubiously, unable to determine its authenticity. After a few seconds of deliberating while enduring Qrow's deepening impatience, she seemed to decide it wasn't worth it to argue with him. The woman took the card, left the room, and returned a minute later with the requested item.
"My thanks," Qrow said with an almost sarcastic undertone as he took it from her.
Weiss had experience using crutches—she'd once taken a bad fall when first learning how to ice skate and fractured her lower leg. It was hell at the time, but she was grateful for it now. With just the one, walking still wasn't exactly painless, but it alleviated enough weight to make it bearable. She followed Ruby's uncle outside and continued until he picked an isolated bench for them to stop at. Her desire to postpone the ensuing conversation as long as possible was overpowered by her need to get off her foot, and she sat down without hesitation. The chill of the late-night Fall air was just another discomfort she had to endure.
Qrow, on the other hand, remained standing. "Oz has been wondering why you've been welshing on the agreement you two made. Asked me to track you down and find out what's been going on, but you've been nowhere to be seen for weeks. Now I'm finding out that my niece has been shot and you're here with her, while Yang seems to be under the impression that Roman Torchwick is somehow involved. It's supposed to be my job to know everything that's happening in this city, so you're going to explain to me in no uncertain terms exactly how this happened and what the hell you and Ruby have been up to. Then you can feel free to explain it all over again to your sister when she gets here."
Weiss looked at him in horror. "No! Please don't tell—"
"She's already been told. Look, the way I see it, you're either the unfortunate victim of some unlucky circumstances or you're an idiot who got wrapped up in something she shouldn't have. Judging by your reaction, I'm inclined to believe it's the latter. Either way, your big sis deserves to know, and it's high time you started talking."
Weiss bit her tongue, having come up with a number of scathing retorts but couldn't let herself voice any of them. She knew she didn't have the right to be offended. She was an idiot. Ever since meeting Ruby, she'd consistently picked the dumbest possible choices out of those presented to her. If she hadn't let her life be dictated by childish fantasies or loneliness or whatever the hell it was, Ruby would be hale and whole and Weiss would be counting down the days to her next meeting with Winter rather than dreading its imminent arrival. Her life was a mess, and it was her own fault.
Weiss stared at the ground as she pondered where to even start. Soon enough, the answer became quite apparent. It all boiled down to her semblance's evolution and her first major mistake—not reporting it to the Civil Anomaly Bureau.
Qrow listened to her story in silence, pardon a scoff or an eye roll here and there. He learned how she first met Ruby, of her witnessing the memory of Summer Rose's murder, and that she volunteered to help Ruby investigate it. Weiss left out Neptune and Sun, skipping straight to telling him how they learned Torchwick had a connection to the killer and recounting the experience at Junior's. Qrow showed no surprise when hearing about Ruby's semblance, but didn't seem to have expected it to spark an ambition in her to become a vigilante. Weiss went a little vague from that point forward, omitting Jaune's reveal and reducing bunkering down in the safehouse to simply, "We went into hiding". She pushed through to detailing what they surmised about Neo and how they managed to locate Torchwick's base, not wanting to give him a chance to question it. Then, at last, she arrived at the events of the present night.
"Then Ruby teleported in front of me," Weiss said. "She took both bullets, grabbed me, and brought us outside, but up in the air. We fell, and that's how I hurt my ankle. Before I could even get a moment to think, Ruby teleported us again—farther away from the building. Then she passed out. She was bleeding and unconscious, so I put pressure on the wound and took out my scroll to call for an ambulance, but then I remembered Ruby saying something about Blake living nearby. So I called her instead. She came in just a couple of minutes and drove us here. I told her about the warehouse on the way and she called it in—that's why she had to leave after we got here. I haven't heard anything else since, but I'm guessing Torchwick fled before anyone arrived."
"That's what I've been told," said Qrow. "Got a whole team down there scouring the place. No contraband anywhere, but it's definitely not been abandoned this whole time. Fat load of good knowing that does us now. Dozens of professionals have been attempting to track Roman Torchwick down for the better part of a year, and here you somehow pull it off in a month—then immediately squander it and reset everyone else back to square one."
"We did what we thought we had to."
"You thought? You didn't think at all—neither of you did. You're just a couple of kids playing 'superhero' while there were real lives on the line. Someone with your level of education should be smart enough to understand that, but I guess not. What? You coast through school on Daddy's money while you still had it? You think that just because you were born without any melanin in your hair it gives you the right to do whatever the hell you want?"
If Weiss had been physically able to, she would have shot straight to her feet. Instead, she had to make do with a mere look of outrage. "That isn't even remotely—!"
"Hush, it's the adult's turn to speak. Nearly two dozen deaths can be traced back to Torchwick since he's been in Vale and you and Ruby were almost added to that number tonight. If you'd just brought this information forward we could've made sure it stopped growing altogether. Instead, you barged in to 'save' a woman you had little evidence is even being held against her will."
"Little evidence?"
"It's this kind of shit that gives paragons a bad rap. You think that just because you have a certain power that you're entitled to use it wherever you see fit, but you're not. I'm no fan of the CAB but people like you help me remember why it has to exist. Nine times out of ten, someone feels that they have to stick their nose where it doesn't belong, they only wind up making things worse. The tenth person pulls through on blind luck, but that doesn't change the fact that they're still wrong. And you're no different."
"But Neo's speed—"
"We would've dealt with it! Do you actually believe that after centuries of violent paragons with apparently unstoppable semblances that one of the most developed nations on this planet never came up with ways to counter them?"
"Of course not!" Weiss had no reason to be arguing—he was just saying everything she was already thinking, after all. Maybe fighting back was just in her nature. Or maybe she just needed a way to distract herself from her own guilt. It was probably both. Whatever the case, Qrow was talking down to her and treating her like a child, and she wasn't just going to sit there and take it.
"But we didn't know what the police would've done and didn't want to risk the chance that whatever it was wouldn't involve taking her alive," she said.
"It's not your business to know—it's your duty as a civilian to report this to the proper authorities. Instead of thinking about the life of a trained killer, you should've been thinking about all the lives she and her boss have taken and will take. It doesn't matter who she was or what's been done to her. The fact of the matter is that now she's dangerous and needs to be taken off the streets by any means necessary."
"Whatever happened to 'rehabilitation'? Mayor Ozpin hired me to heal the minds of criminals in order to prevent them from returning to crime. I was just trying to do the same thing for her."
"Oz hired you to treat people who aren't still active threats to society. Instead, you resorted to literal vigilantism, a topic of which he made his views on very clear."
"We thought that if there was a chance to save her then we had to try. We understood the risks."
"Did you now? Oh, well that fixes everything," Qrow said sarcastically. "Ruby may never have full motor control over her left arm again, but that's fine because you both understood there was a chance of that happening."
Weiss's resolve faltered. "She— she what?"
"The bullet hit her brachial plexus. Doctors aren't sure yet whether surgery will be enough to fully repair the damage. You know she wants to be an engineer, right? Can you imagine how difficult that's going to be with a handicapped dominant hand? Someone's going to have to tell her when she wakes up. And eventually she'll need to understand that she's equally to blame for it."
Weiss stared at him, horrified, until her eyes began to water. "Oh god." She buried her face in her hands, and the tears finally began to fall for the first time that night.
An awkward silence passed, broken only by quiet, irregular sobs until Qrow spoke again. His tone was a bit softer, but still stern. "Tell me how Jaune Arc fits into all of this."
Weiss hiccuped, then looked back up at him. In her current state, the only response she could think of was, "Who?" which she immediately hated herself for.
"Don't be stupid," said Qrow. "His name's been all over the media for the past couple days. The investigation dug up that he went to high school with Pyrrha Nikos. He's been friends with Ruby for years and this new 'Protector' just happened to save your life twice. I know it's him in the suit, so don't try to pretend it's not."
Weiss tried to come up with something to say, but no words came out of her mouth.
The man sighed. "Look. This whole mess is complicated enough as is. I've spent time behind bars and I'm not about to put Ruby through that. All this stays between us and everyone already involved. That includes Oz, Tai, and Yang—and her girlfriend too, apparently. But if I'm going to sort this out, I need to know everything. Arc's involved—how? And who else?"
Weiss wiped her eyes and studied his face. "What are you saying? You're just going to cover this up?"
"Things are complicated, alright? I just said that. There's a lot more going on here than you or even I understand. Thirty percent of missing persons reports over the past two years have been paragons, most of which have semblances with offensive capabilities. That's up from three percent prior to Salem's assault. It's why I don't want Ruby registering her new ability, or going out and recklessly abusing it."
"You don't trust the Bureau?"
"There are very few people I trust. But that's irrelevant. I asked you a question."
Weiss bit her lip, not seeing any other option but to speak truthfully. She just hoped Qrow was a man of his word and that she wasn't about to seal her friend's fate. "Jaune was the one who saved us those two times—three, actually. He was there when we first met Neo, too. But he's not a vigilante. He only stepped in to protect us because we were in danger—he never sought out to attack criminals. He didn't break any laws."
"Oh yeah? Then how'd he get his hands on the suit?"
"I . . . Pyrrha left it for him." She couldn't keep the doubt out of her voice.
"That's funny, because the city seized it when they recovered her body from the wreckage. It was stolen several days later. So I wonder how it wound up in Arc's position."
"I . . . I don't know. He never said."
"So by the looks of it, if he's innocent of vigilantism then he's still at the very least guilty of stealing from the government."
Weiss had no response to that.
"What else? Did he have anything to do with your little escapade tonight?"
She reluctantly filled in the rest of the gaps, revealing the parts about the safe house and the inhibitor. She told him that Jaune was helping them learn to fight and defend themselves and how he'd planned to help them take down Torchwick. This incriminated him of conspiring to commit vigilantism—something Qrow had been quick to point out. And at last, all her secrets had been laid bare.
"That's everything," she said.
"You're sure? Nothing else you want to tell me?"
The images swam back to the forefront of her mind. A flash of red. A splash of red. Ruby's unconscious, bleeding form. Weiss's eyes began to well up again.
"There is," she said. "I'm . . . I'm so sorry."
They moved Ruby out of the emergency room and to an upper floor where they'd be keeping her for at least a few days. Weiss now sat in the nearest waiting room. What she was waiting for, it was hard to say—for Ruby to wake up; for somebody to tell her to leave; for her brain to let her drift off to sleep in that uncomfortable chair so she could have a brief respite from the disaster of a night she'd had. She didn't know.
Her foot was now held safely in a splint after Qrow ordered she let a doctor take a look at it—she hadn't sprained it, luckily, so it'd only take a few days to heal. Afterward, he left via jumping out of a window. With all that she'd seen recently, Weiss had barely even been fazed by it.
A while later, Blake finally returned, looking exhausted. She'd been heading straight for the hallway, but paused when she saw Weiss alone. "What are you doing out here?" she asked.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Weiss said. She expected a retort and was honestly a little disappointed when she didn't get one.
"How is she?" Blake asked, a pair of pursed lips her only reaction to the snappy reply.
Weiss looked down at the floor. "She's . . . She'll be fine, but . . . they think there could be lasting nerve damage."
Blake cupped a hand over her mouth. "No."
Weiss nodded gravely.
"How?" Blake asked. "How did this happen?"
Weiss said nothing.
"You call me in the middle of the night using Ruby's scroll, saying she's been shot, and then you claim to know where a wanted crime boss is—you don't explain anything on the way here. All this after you and Ruby ask me to convince Yang to indefinitely move in with me for some mysterious reason. I need answers."
"Then get them from Yang—or her father. They know everything now."
"No, Weiss. You—"
"Just leave me alone! I'm not going to relive this all again. Not for you."
Blake's expression tightened, but only temporarily. A conflicted look passed over her face, and then it ultimately settled on shame. It became evident in that moment that the phone call they'd shared a month prior had had a bigger effect than Weiss thought—that her words had been ringing around the woman's head all this time.
"I . . . I know I've been a bad friend," Blake said. "I'm not proud of some of the choices I've made. And I'm not going to ask you to forgive me, but after all that happened with Adam—"
"Stop." Weiss couldn't believe her ears. Leave it to Blake to choose the worst possible opportunity to say what she'd been waiting four years to hear. "This isn't the time for this."
"It's already long overdue. If this isn't the right time, then what is?"
"I don't know. When I'm not sleep-deprived or so emotionally unstable—when things settle down and get less insane. Literally any other time than now."
"Right." A long, awkward silence endured until Blake spoke again. "I'm going to go see Ruby."
"Go ahead."
"Do you want to come with me?"
Weiss hesitated. "I'm fine right here."
"Why? Aren't you her best friend?"
Weiss was taken aback. "She . . . said that?"
Blake rolled her eyes. "What, you're just learning this now?"
It did seem obvious in retrospect. The only other person Weiss had been as close to as she was with Ruby was her sister. But it was still a shock to have the label suddenly thrown at her. After all—Ruby had friends that she'd known a lot longer, like Jaune and Blake. That she considered Weiss to be the most deserving of that title . . .
Now Weiss felt even more guilty.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "I don't have a right to see her."
"What are you talking about?" Blake asked, perplexed.
"Ruby's in here because of me. I should have taken those bullets—they were meant for me. But she . . . that dolt . . ."
"Oh."
Weiss furiously wiped at her eyes, refusing to let herself cry again.
"But . . . you do realize that if she hadn't done what she did—that if you were in a hospital bed instead, or worse—she'd feel exactly the same. She'd never be able to forgive herself."
Weiss was silent for a while. It was true. Honestly, there was just no winning in this situation. Either way, someone wound up hurt while the other tears themselves apart over it. Ruby at the very least had her armor plates to block the worst of the damage. If only Weiss hadn't been too incompetent to figure out how to work the Protector suit. If only she'd just said, "no," and avoided the entire ordeal altogether . . . If only Ruby hadn't pinned that decision on her in the first place.
"Alright," Weiss decided. She carefully stood and gripped the crutch—now officially issued to her—beneath her arm. Moving was still painful, but she'd gotten used to it.
"Do you need help?" Blake offered.
"I'm fine," Weiss said, her voice sharper than intended. After a moment, she added, "But thank you."
They walked together to Ruby's room. Yang was standing outside talking to a doctor. She gave a small smile to Blake, but it fell off her face when her gaze moved over to Weiss. Her expression was difficult to read, but it wasn't warm. Thankfully, the detective went back to her conversation and allowed them to enter the room without a fuss, which Weiss had been worried about.
Inside, Ruby slept in the bed with her father hunched over in the chair beside it. He was a well-muscled man who wore cargo shorts and a vest over a sleeveless shirt. That left his biceps exposed—one with a red bandana wrapped around it and the other sporting a tattoo of a tribal, heart-like symbol. He didn't resemble Ruby at all, but he seemed to share her caring nature. He wasn't the wealthy businessman that Weiss had once envisioned.
He looked back down at his daughter and let the two women approach in silence. Weiss lingered near the foot of the bed while Blake stood opposite Taiyang and gingerly touched Ruby's face. The girl looked so peaceful. No pain, no concerns, no regrets. She seemed perfectly content to be sleeping there in a hospital gown with her left shoulder wrapped in bandages and a needle in her other hand. The beeping of her heart rate monitor was the only sound in the room.
"Never thought I'd see her like this," Ruby's father said without taking his eyes off her. "I don't think I'll ever get used to it."
"You mean asleep?" said Blake.
Taiyang nodded. "Always conscious, ever since she was born. Raising a kid who never slept was the most difficult thing I've ever done. You'd think it'd be exhausting for her, being awake all the time. But she always had so much energy—always. And now . . ."
You could hear the pain in his voice. If it was this difficult for Weiss, she couldn't even imagine how much worse it was for him.
"Mr. Xiao Long, I'm so sorry," she said. "I never meant for this to happen."
"I know," he said. "I'm just glad she's alive."
"We'll catch who did this," said Blake. "I promise."
He smiled sadly. "That's exactly what Summer would have said."
Blake stood by Ruby's side for a bit longer, then gave her hand a small squeeze before leaving the room, likely to talk to Yang. Weiss was left awkwardly standing there, unsure what to do, so she just hobbled over to an empty seat and sat down, resting her crutch on her lap.
"I won the lottery the day her mother died," Taiyang said after a still.
Weiss gasped.
"Okay, that sounded terrible, but I meant it literally," he said quickly. "I had a ticket. I was home by myself, watching the drawing, and the numbers matched up one by one. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't wait for Summer to get off work to tell her, so I called her. But she didn't pick up. Ruby was off living in a dorm. Yang came home, but my wife didn't. They found her body three days later, cold. It destroyed me. It was weeks before I could pull myself together enough to turn in that ticket. I wasn't sure I'd ever bring myself back from the dark place I was in, but I did eventually—for my girls. I can't bear the thought of losing either one of them, too.
"But if I took it hard, it was nothing compared to Ruby. I can't even describe to you how devastated she was. She refused to let me spend any of the winnings on her for the longest time. I think she felt like the universe was paying us for Summer's life. She'd give up every last cent to have her back, or even just to see the killer brought to justice. God knows I would too."
Weiss understood now why Ruby was always so evasive about how her father got his wealth.
"So I get why she did what she did," said Taiyang. "For her, having anyone else she cares about die would be worse than dying herself. That's how I know that when she wakes up, she'll tell you she'd take another bullet for you in a heartbeat."
Beep. Beep. Beep. Rhythmically the vital monitor broke the lingering quiet that followed. Weiss hated hospitals. She wanted to leave. She didn't belong here—she was more sure of that now than ever. Taiyang's words were no doubt meant to comfort her, but they didn't. She felt worse than ever. It reaffirmed what had been poking at the back of her mind all this time. Weiss hadn't been helping Ruby; she'd been enabling the unhealthy behaviors of a girl who'd never fully processed her grief.
"I . . . I need some air." Weiss stood as quickly as she could without inflicting too much pain on herself and made straight for the door. Outside, Yang and Blake were whispering to each other with their foreheads touching and eyes closed. Weiss tried to hurry past them and continue on her way, but unfortunately, it wasn't that easy.
"Hey," said Yang.
Weiss pretended not to hear her.
"Schnee!"
Weiss stopped but kept her back to them, bracing herself for the next berating. "Yes?"
"Where do you think you're going?"
"I need some air," Weiss parroted.
"What about Ruby? You're just going to leave her after what she did for you?"
"Yang," Blake said softly.
"I'll be coming back," Weiss lied. "I'm just stepping out for a few minutes."
"On that foot?" Yang said cynically.
"Yes."
There was a pause before Yang spoke again. "Just tell me one thing—why? Why'd you do it?"
Weiss gave her an honest answer. "I don't know."
Yang let her continue on without any further protests.
Weiss made her way to the elevator and rode it to the ground floor. She stepped out and limped on her crutch all the way down the hall and out the hospital entrance. Although her excuse had been fabricated, it was nice to breathe in the outside air. But she soon enough found herself wishing she was back inside, as there were no taxis to be seen within the sprawling parking lot, the cool breeze was biting at her skin, and walking alone at night always made her nervous.
She found the nearest bench and sat down, still within view of the glass doors. She took out her scroll and pulled up a rideshare service. It took her a minute to decide on the destination, but ultimately she realized there was only one place to go—home. Jaune had delivered her most recent rent payment for her, so she didn't have to fear finding an eviction notice waiting for her. At the moment, the thought of falling into bed and being able to forget her woes for a few blissful hours was all that was keeping her going.
Less than two minutes after finishing the pickup request, a car rolled to a stop in front of her. Weiss was pleasantly surprised, but then her heart sank. The vehicle was white and accented by a modest amount of gold. She had seen it before. She knew who owned it.
The passenger side window rolled down, revealing the man in the driver's seat—a man she'd thought she'd seen the last of.
"Hello, Snow White," said Roman Torchwick, one hand on the wheel and the other leveling a pistol at her. "Thought I might find you here. Get in and don't scream."
A/N: Credit to my beta readers: Bardothren, I Write Big, and 0neWhoWanders. They're great writers who are a huge help with making this story as good as it can be.
